During the 40s, after the war, everyone was having kids, and I grew up in the midst of an extended family of cousins and pseudo-cousins. Every Sunday, all summer long, caravans of these nuclear families would head out to the Long Island beaches or up to lakes in the Catskills, where blankets would be spread, beach umbrellas set up, and ice chests unpacked with enough food to keep the cousins running and splashing, digging and giggling until the setting sun sent us yawning for home.
That was when we all lived within three blocks of each other. Now many of us don