Being Dago

Sorry I haven't posted much, although I was wanting to leave that Project Heart post up there for everyone I knew to participate. Oh, and Shawntay bought me a Gamecube for my birthday, so I've been a total Mario Whore for the past few days.
My cousin Chris just left from a nice but all too quick visit for the weekend. Since I've been so estranged from my family for most of the past 10 years, it was truely a treasure to be able to be around him again, even if only for 1 day. His visit of course has inspired lots of internalized ponderings of my bizarro family life. And I'm not talking about Mom's side, complete with the hourly question of "What stupid stunt did my younger brother pull now?", but the gigantoid Italian family I often wax poetically of, yet rarely interract with.
Back when I was growing up in California, family was a huge part of my life, on my father's side. Summers in LA and visits with the relatives were always the some of the warmest of my memories. The delicious meals my Aunt prepared for a busting at the seams household were entrenched in a wealth of cultural history, and my own family roots were practically drilled into my head by eager aunts and uncles desperate to pass on 'our story'. There was never a moment that I wasn't utterly aware that I was ITALIAN, all capitals, be damn proud of it or face the wrath of wine making cousins. My three cousins and I were all practically inseperable when we were in So Cal, the primary staple of our visits down there. We'd chase eachother all over the house and drive our respective parents crazy. There's not a single picture of childhood trips to Disneyland that don't contain all four of us wearing those stupid mouse ears.
But we moved away, family ties were irrepairably severed, and the only reminder of my Dago-hood were my tats, my skin, and penchant for drinking more red wine than should be recommended by physicians. I still don't like olives, although I could bathe in olive oil. I guess I just seperated from my history, beyond of course beating into the heads of those around me that my mercurial temperment is entirely due to my bloodline.
So, my recently overly american/homogenized self was in a bit of a quandry when Mi Cugino announced his intent to visit. The last we saw of eachother was in the unique circumstance of my trip to OC for his brother's funeral. An odd time indeed. Before that, the most recently we had seen eachother was for a quick dinner in San Francisco during our visit there. What should I plan? I stuck to my usual Friend Visit Itinerary, which is plan to eat out, let them decide which landmarks we should go gawk at.
You know what happened? We enjoyed long conversations over coffee and some excellent NW fare, and checked out his pictures of a recent trip to Italy (no, I refrained from screaming Zi HOMELAND!). It was like there wasn't a huge seperation of old, save for him filling me in on his other brother's recently developed social foibles. It was more relaxed and enjoyable feeling than I could have expected, given the ire still apparent between our parents. But most importantly, watching my cousin walk up the driveway with the obligatory bottle of wine we Italians feel we MUST bring to a house we visit reminded me that my roots are still there. And the warm fuzzy feeling I get from remembering my family is still here. Perhaps maybe those memories can continue now. Family shouldn't be something I am scared of, it's there to be warm and loving and perfectly content sitting on a couch and rambling into the night. Families probably have these happy notes in them around the world, in any culture and language. But Italian families have a unique richness to them complete with boisterous uncles, vino flowing like water and the smell of garlic permeating everywhere. And damn, it feels good to be a Dago.