It had been a while since I had last lived in NYC, so I asked Danielle (name changed), my “new” cousin who I was arranging to meet, to pick the place. I always hate being the one to choose, since I usually feel (a self-inflicted, likely slightly neurotic) pressure to find the “best” bar/restaurant to fit a circumstance, and am frequently afraid that I’ll choose a place the other person won’t like. And I CERTAINLY didn’t want to do choose a place she wouldn’t like when I’m trying to make a decent first impression! Besides, I usually feel like I have my head under a rock when it comes to knowing the best places to go, and am usually pretty happy with whatever place someone else recommends. It’s like a little adventure to me to try someplace new, anyway.
Not like this wouldn’t be enough of an adventure already! But still.
Thankfully, Danielle was willing to come up with a place, and ended up choosing a French restaurant called Dirty Truck based on the recommendations of some friends. French–I could do that! So I immediately looked up the menu online (as I tend to do). Nerd alert: I think I’m a little bit in love with food, and my mild obsession with screening menus is just one of my love’s several symptoms. There was even a point in time when I would take out menus and read them before bed, a form of “bedtime stories”, if you will. I find it oddly calming. No, I didn’t read them out loud (but thanks for your concern :P), but yes, I understand that makes me a special kind of weird. This is also a pretty funny habit of mine considering that I’m a fairly skinny, petite person. I’m pretty sure I can thank my Mom’s DNA for that, because it’s certainly not my diet.
Anyway, as I perused their lunch menu, I found myself getting a bit lost because there weren’t many descriptors of the options, and those that did exist were largely in French. Also, I knew that she was a vegetarian, so I was hoping to find something vegetarian for myself, too, as a showing of familial solidarity. Plus, as far as first impressions go, I don’t exactly want to order a steak when meeting my vegetarian cousin for the first time. Besides, that would just be expensive (although the menu on the whole was erring on that side…whoops! I had forgotten how inflated NYC prices were while I was away!) By that point in the night though, I was getting tired, so I figured I’d just take my chances, rely on my dear friend Google to translate options in the moment if I had to, and not worry about it too much.
The next morning, I got up, got ready, and got myself out the door with extra time in case I got lost while walking. It was supposed to be a little over a mile away and didn’t really make sense to hop on the subway, so I relied on google maps to route me. About half a mile in, I see that Danielle messaged me to see if it would be cool for us to push back the time a bit, which was totally fine. Anything that makes it less likely that I’ll accidentally wind up being late was a good thing in my mind! I figured that I would walk directly to the restaurant first so I’d know definitively where it was, then just find a coffee shop nearby to hang out in until it got closer.
After locating the restaurant, I explored the surrounding area a bit until I came upon a coffee shop, then went inside to order. Once inside, I realized that I was already feeling pretty nervous, so high levels of caffeine probably wouldn’t be the best thing to sooth my nerves, and decided to order some tea instead before finding a place to sit down. When it was finally about time to meet up, I headed toward the restaurant with a million thoughts in my head.
Usually, when I’m meeting a friend at a restaurant and I know I’m likely to be arriving first, I give the host/hostess a heads up that I’m meeting up with someone, and a little about what they look like so they know who to send my way (rather than accidentally seating them separately). As I approached the restaurant’s front door, I quickly rehearsed this scenario in my head, letting the staff member know that I’d be meeting up with my cousin…
Before I could get to the descriptor portion of that sentence, the gravity of what was about to transpire set in once again. I would be meeting my cousin. Yes, that felt weird as a descriptor in a way, especially since I had met up with another cousin of mine (on my Dad’s side) last night–but that was a different kind of cousin entirely, one I had known all my life. It seemed strange, on one hand, to apply the same descriptor to Danielle, who I’ve not only never met in my life, but was never supposed to know even existed. A hidden cousin. And yet, she WASN’T just some stranger that I was about to meet–not a colleague, not a client, not even a friend yet, really. Yes, she is my cousin. But saying in passing to the restaurant host that I was meeting my cousin just felt so casual and normal in a way that it absolutely wasn’t. Besides, my usual habit of describing my fellow diner’s physical attributes wasn’t really going to cut it–sure, I had seen a few pictures in her Facebook profile, but I have no idea have tall she is or anything like that. Do I tell the host that I’ve never met my cousin before? (It felt almost akin to a blind date, for a second.) But that would be weird, I thought. Who meets up with a cousin they’ve never met? And to explain it would have been TMI, especially in NYC where people are just trying to get on with their day. Yet part of me felt like this moment of finally meeting some of the family that I’ve always had but may have never known about, let alone found, wanted everyone to know and celebrate this weird, momentous occasion. Hey, maybe they’d show a little comradery in the form of a free shot? God knows I could’ve used it at that point!
Ultimately, I decided to spare the staff my personally momentous and exciting (yet ultimately trivial) news, and just told the host that another young woman would be joining me shortly. Keep it simple, stupid. You got this.
After being seated, I realized that I really did need a drink, even JUST one, and seriously contemplated the pros and cons of taking a shot (which could be done discretely then taken away) versus just ordering a damn wine in the open, despite it being about 12:30pm. On a weekday. Ultimately, I decided that ordering a shot would be too weird to do without an explanation (although I’m sure my server would’ve cared less), so I just prayed that my cousin wouldn’t judge me too harshly for ordering a drink at lunch, given the circumstance. As it turned out, the wine was a bit pricey, so I opted for a beer. (The server didn’t seem to mind.)
About 4-5 sips in, and I notice her at the front desk speaking with the host. I waved her down over to our table.
Immediately, I could tell that she was a very warm, welcoming person, which helped a lot in quickly putting each of us at ease. Plus, as soon as our server came by, she ordered a glass of wine, so I knew I was in good company. 🙂
We talked about all kinds of things–work, places we’d each lived, what we’re doing with our lives right now, and a million other things. It was clear to me early on in our conversation that in addition to being a kind person, she was also very smart, talented, and accomplished. While I would’ve been perfectly happy to have seen kindness alone, it was even more awesome to see these other qualities represented in the first of my new half of relatives. We also had lots of things in common, which was exciting (and certainly aided in the conversational flow!) Of course, we also discussed where I was at with my search. I refreshed her memory on what I had ascertained so far, and caught her up on the newest elements, like Darren’s DNA test and my conversations with both Meredith and Christy.
I also realized while telling her this that I still had no idea whether or not a.) Keith knew about us yet (Christy never sent any follow-up response) and/or b.) Keith’s kids, our potential half-siblings, knew a darn thing about any of us either. At this point, it was growing harder to believe that the grape-vine wouldn’t have gotten to them by now, especially with several of their cousins on Darren/Meredith’s wing of the family knowing what they know. Danielle didn’t know either, and I felt pretty badly that there would be a possibility that they might find out something like this second-hand. At this point, though, it wasn’t exactly something I could control, and the last time I spoke with Meredith it seemed like the general consensus was to wait until receiving Darren’s results before seeking additional contact with Christy and Keith’s wing.
I explained to Danielle that, while I was holding out hope that my brothers and I are (biologically) Darren’s, some of the supplemental DNA evidence I’d been able to uncover recently on Ancestry.com seemed to suggest that we were more likely to be Keith’s. She shared what little she knew about that wing of the family, and we agreed that it just might fit. If we are Darren’s biological kids, that would make Danielle and us first cousins, and if we are Keith’s, we’d be second cousins. She assured me that, regardless of the results, we’re cousins nonetheless and she’s glad that we found each other.
🙂 I agreed.
Eventually, we gave the restaurant back their table (btw, if you ever stop at Dirty French, check out their avocado toast sandwich–sounds super basic but it was actually FANTASTIC), then exchanged our goodbye-for-nows, and took a picture together.
Hopefully she won’t mind that I’m posting it here (we’re both wearing sunglasses anyway). Apparently she had shared it with her sister later that day, who then shared it with me. 🙂
I didn’t get to see her a second time before heading back to the Philadelphia area, but I’m excited to catch up with my “new” cousin the next time I’m in NYC!