Supernuclear family (story)

My family home is in southern [County A], but the problem is that life happens in [County Z], whereas County A is encased in amber. So my older sister and I use my uncle-and-aunt’s house in [beach town of County Z] as a hub or staging center. It’s also just super nice to go for runs along the beach.

When I’m squatting at their house, I walk my little cousin to school. I’m 13 years older than her. We talk about school or what a beautiful morning it is. It’s really nice.

I’m very lucky because I have what I call a supernuclear family. My mom’s younger sister married my dad’s younger brother. That’s the Beach family. So I have two younger cousins, age 13 and 10, that look and act a lot like me, because of course they are more genetically related to me than normal first-cousins. It’s like having extra siblings, but actually it’s quite weirder. One is the age gap, which means I can see developmental characteristics in my super cousins that are eerily repeated in myself and my actual siblings, but now from a removed perspective. My hypothesis is that the other factor is that these aren’t my siblings, and so birth order hasn’t influenced their development to differentiate from my personality. So again, it’s more like mirror images 10 years repeat instead of siblings.

It’s nice to have a supernuclear family because it’s like I got many of the benefits of having a large nuclear family for free.

Almost every weekend, my parents hang out with my uncle and aunt. We’ll either go north to Beach, or they’ll come south to our house in County A. I don’t know how intentional that is, or whether that was ultimately a product of family dynamics or the fact that my uncle and aunt are raising kids and so naturally they are inclined to spend more time with family (the way people usually do once they start having kids). Likewise, my parents are empty nesting these last few years so of course they like to be around the kiddos.

I think the other thing that’s really sweet is that my uncle and aunt are like best friends to my parents, just based on how much time they spend together. That’s an observation I’ve made that has never been explicitly pointed out. Part of this can also be explained that both of my parents’ families were “latchkey keys” as refugee American immigrants, and in both circumstances it was quite natural that “your family is your best friend because they were all you had”. But anyway, it’s really nice to see.

The supernuclear family identity is quite strong, [...] [we went on vacation together to Singapore, for example.]

I should mention we’ve had a group chat for our supernuclear family for years now, and I think that helps with my perception that we are one cohesive unit or team.