Janessa currently lives in southern California.  She is a Junior at Cal State Fullerton, where she is earning her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology, in which she ultimately plans to earn her Ph.D.  She and her boyfriend Logan are in puppy love with each other and with their English Bulldog puppy, Stella. 

My earliest memory of Janessa was actually a conversation I had with her mother, my Cousin Ginny; technically, Janessa was there for it.  My Mom and Dad and I were visiting some of our family, on Dad’s side, out in the California (about half of Dad’s family moved there in the early 1980s), and staying at the home of my late Aunt Barbara (Dad’s older sister, the oldest of 6) and Uncle Teddy – Parents and Grandparents to Ginny and Janessa, respectively.  I was seven years old at the time, and the coolest thing to happen to me in life up to that point was Ginny letting me sleep in her waterbed (which, by the way, turned out to be the best place to be during a small earthquake in the middle of the night; I suppose those gentle waves rocked me back to sleep!).  One day during our visit, Ginny sat me down and told me that she was going to be a Mom and that, in another 5 months, I would have a new baby cousin!  Needless to say I, a seven-year-old only child, was ecstatic, and fully expected Ginny to move back home to NY for the sole purpose of letting me play with the baby, who was born happy and healthy the following winter.  Of course, when Ginny stayed in California with her family and her new baby girl Janessa, I was a little disappointed; I still had no baby to play with!  So when the new Mom and baby visited NY later that summer, and my Mom got to babysit for five-month-old Janessa, I was beside myself. 

I still vividly remember sitting on the red, crushed-velvet, plastic slip-covered couch (don’t judge) in our living room, beside the coffee table upon which Janessa slept in her little travel bed.  And there I sat, for what felt like hours, staring at the baby.  My Mom asked what I was doing, and I told her I wanted to be right there, so I didn’t miss it when the baby woke up, so I could play with her immediately. 

Janessa and I got to see each other again just a few times over the years, our visits of course punctuated by phone calls and letters and, now, emails and text messages.  We’ve watched each other grow up from our own perspectives, divided by seven years and three thousand miles.  I am still astounded to think that tiny sleeping baby has grown up to be a bright and loving and respectable young woman, her Mother’s pride and joy and, soon, a college graduate.  It’s hard to believe all this when, every time I think of Janessa, what I remember is being frustrated that I was too young to hold her myself without being seated squarely in the middle of the couch, against the back and away from the edges, with a Responsible Adult on either side of me, yet feeling motherly towards this tiny baby girl when, in fact, I was just a baby myself.

I’m so proud to share the bonds of family with her, and so thrilled to see the woman she has become.  Time has passed, often years without seeing each other; holidays were sometimes shared in person, and sometimes by phone.  Nevertheless, as the saying goes, blood is thicker than water; my Cousin Janessa remains as dear to me as if she were my sister, and I am so proud and honored to have her bear witness to the marriage of our family with Jason’s.