This year, two of my baby relatives are heading off to medical school and I couldn’t be prouder.
Growing up in an equally poor household, their family stayed that way. They didn’t try to live above their means, live above their means or throw money away on big purchases. They had one parent stay home with the kids and tend to their needs physically and educationally: carting them around to school, a few limited activities, cooking, extra tutoring when they were younger or taking them to study groups and accelerated classes when they were older while the other parent worked.
Perhaps they got a wee bit spoiled in that they don’t cook or clean for themselves at all at home, but their mommy looooves to do those things for them. Instead they studied their tuchuses off and earned full scholarships to universities, and then took care of themselves after that. And now, medical school.
It finally feels like they’re becoming adults as much as I’ve been in denial about it even though they’ve been growing up right at my heels. It’s a cognitive dissonance that may never fade to realize my wee rellies aren’t so wee. I remember cradling them as infants, while just a child myself. I remember dandling babies off knees hardly far enough off the ground to fall and scrape it. The distance between us is half a decade and more, yet it seems like they represent the next generation, and perhaps even redeem mine own.
At times, I look at our socio-political landscape and I weep for our present. Others, I look at my cousins and I think, we may have something yet.
They might well indeed be the ones to mend up my broken heart over my sibling. They have potential still, they have futures to fulfill and prospects ahead of them. I can’t wait to see what life has in store for them and what they’ll do with it all.
They have “the promise of a generation.” (CJ Cregg, The West Wing)
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