But in the east the sky was pale and through the gray woods came lanterns with wagons and horses, bringing Grandpa and Grandma and aunts and uncles and cousins.
My father came to Britain in search of a better life. My aunts, uncles and cousins fled here in search of safety as Cyprus's Greek and Turkish populations fell into open hostility.
Our house was always full of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.
My parents didn't really understand too much about sport. At that time, we were in a Polish community in the inner city of Chicago, and I was the youngest of a bunch of cousins. Polish families are real big, with cousins and aunts and uncles.
I had a wonderful family including my aunts, uncles and cousins but they've all gone to heaven.
Mum and Dad used to do a lot of entertaining. We had quite a nice house, so everybody descended on us at Christmas - aunts and uncles, who weren't even aunts and uncles.
I don't write about the intimate details of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and my mother and my father because it's not right to, for me.
Uncles and aunts, and cousins, are all very well, and fathers and mothers are not to be despised; but a grandmother, at holiday time, is worth them all.
I shared a room with my parents until I was 7, and I lived with my uncles and aunts and my cousins and my grandfather... so the house was always full of people.
My God, it's laundry and family when I come back home. I've got to see my brother and kids, and my sister-in-law, my aunts, my uncles, cousins; everybody is here.
I'm a guy who was born in Cincinnati and whose entire family except for my mother still lives in Cincinnati - my grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, you name it.
In our family, and not just us but even with my cousins, uncles and aunts, we celebrate every festival - be it Christmas, Easter, Eid, Diwali or our birthdays.
Brantford was the fixed point of my universe, growing up. Both sets of grandparents lived there, with various cousins and uncles and aunts, and no matter how far we'd moved off, we came back there for regular visits. In a way no other houses have ever been, my grandparents' houses were 'home,' and the sale of the last of those houses was hard.
They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. The laws that make grandmothers grandmothers, uncles uncles, mothers mothers, cousins cousins, jam jam, and jelly jelly. It was a time when uncles became fathers, mothers lovers, and cousins died and had funerals. It was a time when the unthinkable became thinkable and the impossible really happened.
I come from a family with a really strong work ethic - not just my parents, but my aunts, uncles and cousins. It rubbed off on me. I have a cousin in The Bronx who says I'm like the longshoreman of actors. I am a worker.
I was brought up to look after my parents. My family were Polish Jews, and we lived with my grandmother, with uncles and aunts and cousins all around, and I thought everybody lived like that.
I call on those that call me son, Grandson, or great-grandson, On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts, To judge what I have done. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins have sent?