Family Trees

Trees. The family ones.

Family trees. You may recall creating one in elementary school before it became patently offensive to do so or you made them on multiple Sundays at a church activity. I'll admit I'm a reluctant climber of my own family tree but in an odd twist of fate today, I met someone who lives in the branches of that tree.

In one of those 'How crazy small is this world?!' moments today, I met one of my second cousins. Here's how it went down:

At the end of a mission for our Church, typically returning missionaries head home immediately. Sometimes, parents will come out and pick up the missionary and they spend time seeing the area and meeting people their son or daughter worked with. That's what happened today. This departing missionary brought his parents by and it was so good to meet them. He was an outstanding missionary and it was such a pleasure to be able to thank his parents for sharing him with us. When his mother sat down, she said, 'I think we're related. Do you know (insert my mom's name here)?' Given that said woman is my mom, I said yes. So it turns out her paternal grandfather was my maternal grandmother's brother, making us, according to family tree logic, second cousins. We were all a little taken aback by the circumstances that drew us together. We started to recall memories of our grandparents. We even got my mom on the phone and it was fun for her to recall things as well. It was cool for The Boy too as he and this missionary were really close. He's been a tremendous example to The Boy and now he's got him as a third cousin.

The world really is a small place and I am continually surprised by how little separates us. I was glad I got a chance to climb up the family tree a bit today. After all, to quote, regrettably, the lyrical wizardry of Sister Sledge, we are family.