I have a cousin who lives in California.
I discovered this more or less "by accident" when my mother passed away in 2009, and the Danish Foreign Ministry — who make a habit of contacting leaving relatives of deceased Danish expats living abroad — contacted her brother in Denmark (with the same name as mine, obviously) to let him know that my mother had passed.
So, confused but resourceful, he called his sister in California and asked her to try to find me... which she then did.
I thanked her and we casually got to wondering whether or not we were actually related, given our shared (and very unusual) surnames.
Which it turned out that we were.
My paternal grandfather and her great-grandfather were actually brothers, and lived about a three-minute walk apart in the same swanky suburb of Copenhagen, at the beginning of the 1900's.
In fact, many decades later when I was a kid and would be staying with my auntie in what we called the "city house" we'd walk right past my cousin's great-grandfather's house every other day, on the way to the shops.
MY grandparents' "city house" in Copenhagen... now 8 luxury apartments; built 1901.
Our paths have been remarkably similar in the we both came to the US to go to University, ended up getting married to US citizens and staying on, subsequently getting divorced and then going on to fall in love and marry "the right one" to whom we are still married, and we are both Danish nationals still living in the USA.
We talked a bit this afternoon, because she mistakenly (shades of how we first made contact) sent a photo to me that she actually meant to send to her brother.
But it served as a conversation starter... we only chat occasionally via Facebook messenger once or twice a year, otherwise.
We got on the subject of how we have all really "come down in the world," since those old days of our ancestors.
Fortunes change.
Her great-grandfather was at one point estimated to be the second richest man in Copenhagen (a city of a million+), and my grandfather (his brother) was not far behind. Both were successful merchants and factory owners, although both experienced the inevitable economic downfall of the late 1920s.
100 years later, those grand edifices our ancestors lived in still exist, except as eight luxury apartments in each house, respectively... my cousin and I laughed about the sad truth that just the annual property tax bill on each of those houses today runs more than the entire value of the houses we now live in, ourselves.
And those are not exactly slums...
We're both part of the oldest wave of "Gen X," recognized by more than a few as the first generation to grow up to not be as well off at their parents.
I think about that sometimes, and whereas I harbor no bitterness from a generational perspective I can often look at my life and determine that there were simply more barriers to success since 1965 than before.
The biggest barrier has simply been the total stagnancy of middle class incomes since the late 1970s... which was about the time Gen X started to enter the workforce. I came across a startling (and disturbing) chart some months back that showed how real wages (adjusted for inflation have essentially been completely flat between 1979 and 2023 if you fit in the middle three-fifth of the population, income-wise... while productivity by that same middle group has increased by nearly 80%!
Meanwhile — and there's no getting around the actual publicized data — when I started working full-time in 1985, the worker-to-CEO pay gap ratio here in the USA was about 50-to-1, while it now (as of 2023) sits around 350-to-1.
Again, that's simply the way things are today, here in the US of A.
In many ways, it is the price of the freedom we so highly prize but which also creates a great deal of inequality when the "playing field" is not subject to any kind of oversight. It's interesting how much people complain about this inequality, and yet it is deeply ingrained in all aspects of US culture that government and "regulations" are inherently evil and not to be trusted.
We don't care about simply "doing well," we only care about winning and about being number one, and it manifests in everything from people's desire to "win the lottery" (both literally and figuratively) to looking up to the "ideal" as being Elon Musk, or NBA's Steph Curry, or actor Adam Sandler... rather than the local guy who builds a hardware store and is "quite successful" resulting in a decent and comfortable life.
Anyway, I enjoyed having another chat with my California cousin... and I'm sure we'll catch up again, in about a year or so!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!
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Created at 2024-09-08 21:39 PDT
1209/2466
That was a nice reunion, I believe
It's nice to occasionally talk to distant relatives and get the latest news!