#Relative

An aunt is the self-proclaimed champion of children who heroically overlooks her sibling's parental woes to play the part of savior. She showers grandchildren with extravagant gifts and then promptly intrudes on their secrets with unsolicited inquiries. Ever-present at family gatherings, she delivers the freshest gossip and half-hearted advice in a single breath. Her unconditional generosity and blockbuster counsel collide, leaving everyone amused by the contradiction. At times she shines as a saintly figure, yet inevitably the conversation circles back to her own tales, cementing her role as the domestic troublemaker.

A cousin is the creature bound by a tenuous thread of blood, neither stranger nor sibling. In childhood they are treasured playmates, in adulthood they become subjects of polite detection. Neither parent nor brother, their obligation and affection hang suspended midair. They appear at weddings and funerals at random, masters of chaotic seating charts and vague memories. The comfort of this convenient distance is, in truth, a fragile testament to family bonds.

Grandparents are a cohort of elders who endlessly dispense unconditional love to disposable entities known as grandchildren. Their art lies in pampering and lecturing in equal measure, refined by years of practice. Masters of selective memory, they cloak forgetfulness under the guise of tradition and mistake grandchildren’s eye-rolls for admiration. Simultaneously the earliest adopters of gadgets with “grand” in their name and the slowest to grasp social media trends, they exist in a perpetual time warp.