Well, I just got back from a six-day trip to my grandmother's in Kentucky. While we were there, my uncle Bill and his family came, too. My mother's side of the family has a very convoluted family tree, so Allison and I are rarely clear on exactly how we are related to most of our relatives. For example, my five-year-old cousin Allie is technically not my cousin, but my half-cousin once removed. Her mother is the daughter of the son of my grandmother from her first marriage. Her mother, my cousin, is old enough to be my mother. Both my grandparents were married twice, had two children each, then married each other and had another two. (They each had two and when they got married it made six, as my uncle put it.) Because my grandparents were so old when they had my mother, our branch of the family is much younger than most of our equivalents. My mother was an aunt before she was born and her own sister was more like an aunt to her when she was a teenager. All of my cousins have children of their own now and all are at least fifteen years older than I. This is why I was so glad to see Bill's family.

I'm generally dimly aware when there's a new baby in the family, but with six children, eleven grandchildren, and something like seven great-grandchildren, it's not a big deal for me. So I had some idea that I had a young relative somewhere named Sarah and that she was what my mother calls "a character." I had been in the kitchen a few months ago when Mom had talked to her on the phone, but we'd never seen her. When we got to Grandma's I gathered from the conversation that she was Bill's daughter, which was surprising since he was in his sixties. I idly scanned through the scores of photos plastered to the walls and decided Sarah was probably the little girl with the dark brown hair and the sly expression.

When they finally came, my first though upon seeing Sarah was, "Oh! No one told me she was beautiful!" She was five years old and looked like something out of a picture book. She had what the ballads call "lily-white" skin, which I always thought sounded unhealthy, but on her it was lovely. She had bright eyes and her hair was a pale gold and past her hips. She was indeed a character: I don't think she was silent for more than thirty seconds at a time the whole time she was there. She was so quick and so lovely she just made me want to use the French diminutive all the time. Mom was happy to see her brother and his wife and I think after a while all her family blends together for Grandma, who is 94. But Allison and I hardly spent a minute away from Sarah the whole time she was there.

I think the statement Christine sometimes applies to her mother also applies to me: "She shows people she loves them by feeding them." I was ever so happy to hear Deb say Sarah hadn't eaten breakfast (it was almost noon) because I hardly ever get to feed people, seeing as they mostly know how to feed themselves. So I got to go make toast and bring out the marmalade and butter and juice. Then the rest of the day was spent generally amusing Sarah: drawing, watching her draw, listening to her stories, reading to her, playing restaurant with her. The only cousins my age are on my dad's side and they're all boys. We rarely see each other and are generally terrified of each other, as none of us have spoken directly to each other since we were toddlers. And so it was just such a nice feeling to have a real cousin of my own who wasn't a teenaged boy or scary or a parent.

After dinner at Grandma's one of the adults usually gets up to do the dishes while the children go off to play or read or whatever and the rest of the grown-ups sit around the table and talk. This was the first year I stayed at the table, though I could have done years ago if I had wanted. Sometimes it got a little dull or I wanted to see what Allison and Sarah were doing and I almost got up, but I stayed at the table both nights Bill and Deb were there. I hadn't been aware before that it's a sort of coming-of-age thing and I don't know if it had occurred to anyone else.

After dinner the first night Sarah decided to be an alien and she came around with Allison to tell us this. Later she came around with a little glass candleholder and made us all hold it to our foreheads so we would have magical forehead powers. We all played along, even Grandma, each making fizzing or whooshing noises as we recieved our powers. She insisted that we all address each other as Alien, since we were all aliens now. We got away with using "Alien Cora" or "Alien Grandma" if we needed to refer to someone by name, though. After I left the table she decided she was going to be the queen of the aliens. Allison and I had fun robing her in a multicolored afghan and enthroning her the old vinyl recliner. After that Allison decided she wanted to be a queen too, so I became the oficial peasant. I went from chair to chair, doing what each of the queens asked. When her mother came into the living room, Sarah made her a queen too and the three girls took turns being peasant and serving the three queens. The commands were such things as "Turn around three times!" or "Dust the piano!" or "Do the hokey-pokey!" and finally "Go ask Queen number three (or two or one, depending on who you were) what she wants you to do."

I think Sarah's parents were too lax with her in some ways and that she'd be better off with a sibling. When she kicked Allison in play she was put in time out, but when she kicked her mother for putting her in time out Deb didn't say anything. Both her parents have raised two of their own children before, but for all practical purposes Sarah is an only child and it shows. Even if the parents are experienced, I think only children often get more attention than is good for them and not enough reality.

Those two days we were together I kept wondering what she would be like in ten years or so. Tall and witty and with long blond hair, like my friend Meg? Silent and beautiful, like Ariana? Popular and shallow with a closet of brand name clothes, like so many of the high school girls I know? Smart? Bitter and goth? Mean? Happy? In love? There are so many possibilities for a five-year-old. I look at the people I know at school and wonder what they were like when they were little or what they'll be like when they're thirty. (Or in some cases, whether they'll live to thirty...) I am full of questions about my own future, who I'll be, who I want to be. Do I want to go in this direction? Is it even possible? What will people think of me if I act like this, as opposed to this? Is this really worth it? Is anything really worth it? What am I expected to do? What do I want to do? Where do I want to be and how can I get there? What do I want to accomplish, anyway? All these unanswerable questions are amplified a thousandfold by all the people around me, each forming their own futures day by day. I feel that each decision I make, however little, narrows me down a little bit. Each choice and opinion defines me a little more. It's the alternate universe theory: for each possible outcome to a situation there is a seperate universe. With infinite possible situations and infinite possible outcomes to those situations, there are an infinite universes living out every possibility. And in my own life right now, I feel there are infinite possible universes awaiting me. Each one is so huge and so unforseeable I find it terribly difficult to choose between them. Each tiny choice I make changes my personality and my future forever. I almost look forward to being old because at least then my decisions can only influence my future and not my self. Then I'll have defined who I am and will only have to worry about what happens to me. In seventh grade I heard somebody ask our science teacher, who was in her thirties, if she'd like to be a kid again. She smiled and shook her head. "The older you get the better you like yourself."

July 21
August 9