I don’t know about your family but mine is filled with drama, laughter, heartbreak, and overall surviving.

The cousins, or as we call each other, Primos are as close as we can be. Maybe it’s a Hispanic thing, but we sometimes we know too much and not enough of each other all at the time.

There’s also this…drama, among other things that keep us together. The chisme that bonds us like glue. Like for example, Jessica and Christina, our oldest cousins who have the most issues with each other than anyone else in the family.

I mean, we all had a reason to be jealous of Christina.

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Christina lived in the family’s coffee plantation in El Salvador. Even when El Salvador was considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world, she lived a life of luxury and riches.

Every summer our parents would pack us up and cram us into an economic seat of a Taca flight.

Once there and the humidity hit us the excitement would begin. But first we had to figure how out to fit so many people and luggage’s into the small white caravan.

The parents took turns playing Tetris with both the kids and the bags. One of our dad’s would be responsible for the drive and for the many stops for one of our mothers who desperately needed to pull over to a local food stand for their coco.

The mother in this case is our Tia Patty, Jessica’s mom. We would be visiting her brother, Don Christian and staying at their home at was pretty close to being a resort than a house.

Christina would always greet us with a smile and a loving hug, a tight one, like she didn’t want to let us go. It made sense, we only saw her once every summer. And occasionally when she would be allowed to visit us, which was frankly rare.

Our trips consisted of playing on the beach, one of my most favorite memories. Even though Christina was kind and sweet she was also a bit of a troublemaker. One summer, she “encouraged” me to go to the deeper part of the ocean with her. And of course, I did, she was my older cousin, and I trust her. But it was lessons like this that made me a little weary of her.

She told me to follow her through the rocks that separated the smaller pools to the actual ocean. When I did, I missed my and fell deeper into the water that carried me out. I don’t know how in the world she got me out, but she did and made me promise not to tell the parents.

Jessica, of course, saw the whole thing and held it over our heads the entire time.

I admired Christina. To me she was someone who had everything yet she remained was so humble, kind, and sweet to everyone.

But again, that doesn’t mean she was perfect. As we grew up, we began hearing different stories about Christina. Stories that seemed too dramatic to be true.