I just got word that my cousin is pregnant. Growing up, the two of us were inseparable. She is two months and three days younger than me, and when we were kids we had so much fun together. We had amazing plans of going to Pitt together, where we would be room mates of course, and then we would get married and have babies at the same time. Unfortunately, during high school we drifted apart. She was always one of the pretty, popular girls and I was the brooding drama club president. She was embarrassed to be seen with me, and vice versa. Then I up and moved to Philadelphia, and now I'm lucky if I see her twice a year. As we've gotten older, naturally our high school personas have fallen by the wayside, but our relationship has never been mended. There has been an underlying, unspoken competition between us, most likely inspired by our mothers. We both went to college at the same time, but I graduated first. We both started dating our future husbands in high school, but Dr. SOB and I got married first. Then we had the first baby in the extended family. The first great-grandchild. That was the big one. I called her tonight to congratulate her and her husband, and she shared with me that they had pretty significant trouble getting pregnant. They had been trying for over a year and had been to see a reproductive specialist. I felt so happy that they had been able to finally conceive, but I also felt like a total sack of crap for the couple of occasions where I was secretly excited that I was going to be the first to produce a grandchild, great-grandchild, in the family. If they had been as lucky as we were, they would have beat us to the punch. And maybe this one time, it would have been nice for her to win.
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