I was raised a Mormon in small town in the desert, Church of Later Day Saints. We had a large family, everyone did, all around us. We were five kids and a mom and dad and another mom came to live with us. A cousin, is what my mom called her but everyone knew different. My mom and her cousin got along like two sisters and there was peace and love in our house. Along came a new baby, a pretty little girl that we all loved.
When it was my time to leave, to go to school and meet some nice Mormon boy who needed a well trained wife, I left to go to school in Ogden. It was brutal winter that year, I remember. Farm girls like me stood out, we were really different than the girls who grew up in Salt Lake. We were resourceful and knew how to manage things around the house. Soon I met this fellow, he was Canadian from Alberta and we hit it off. I told him I was interested in marriage but I had to know, where he was from, what if one day I had a cousin come to live with us, was that going to be all right.
He wasn’t sure at all, he told me that he didn’t know anything about that. Cousins or whatever just didn’t come and live just like that. I told him then, he had two choices, he could go back to Alberta and be cold at night, or he could come and learn how to live on a farm and be kept warm at night. It was hard work, but my father would teach him right. And I told him I had a cousin, she was still too young, but by the time we had everything set up she would be old enough.
I explained to him, so he would understand. Cousins make good babies, and babies is what it’s all about.
If me snd you were in a relationship and you had asked me if your cousin could stay with us, I’d say yes but that’s as far as it would go.