The blessings and curses of being the youngest

My youngest cousin is three years younger than me. The two of us have pretty much the same life story: we both went to a good school, graduated, went to university, had several relationships, several part time jobs. In all those things, I was always the first. I was the first in the family to have bring home a Turkish boyfriend, the first in the family to enter University, the first to learn Latin.

In that sense, my cousin always had it easier than me. He never had to listen to my grandfather going on about him forgetting another piece of his background with every foreign word he learned. And that, even though his dread locks were meant to be much more provocative than my Oasis T-shirt. When he did those things, my grandparents had already gotten used to the idea of their grandchildren doing things only their class enemy knew about. 

When I decided to spend some time in the USA, I got to hear all those worries, concerns and complaints by my family. Why are you leaving, don’t you like it here? What if you get robbed? What if you get lost? Do you hate your family so much that you want to get away from us? Yes, family reunions were getting annoying in those days. The same thing happened when I was about to go Spain.

Why do you have to go to Spain? Can’t you study here? But in Spain, there is the ETA? Do you know how much it will cost to get there, in case something happens to you? 

Now, my little cousin has decided to go to Costa Rica and work as a farm hand there. A much more daring and adventurous plan than me staying in a host family or getting an Erasmus scholarship, I think. I really admire his courage for doing that – going to a foreign country without a double bottom consisting of an organisation, scholarship money and a list of cheap student housings. 

When he announced his plan to my grandparents, they reacted much different from what I had expected. Instead of giving him thousands warnings, my grandmother just said: “Well, you young people need to have some international experience in your CV now, don’t you?” There was no “but you really have to go?” kind of talk. Instead my cousin could lean back while I had to endure my grandmother’s worries about me not being married at the age of 24.

On the one hand, I felt envious of him for not going though all the trouble I had. On the other hand, I felt sorry for him because my grandparents didn’t seem to care so much anymore. Before I had gone off to Spain, my grandmother had made me show her on a map exactly where I was going. After that, she spend every day watching the international weather forecast on TV to see if I was about to get hit by a thunderstorm or a drought. Now, her grandchildren going abroad and coming back after a year, seems to have become a normal thing for her. And my poor cousin doesn’t have anybody who worries about the weather for him.