Last weekend I went to a family reunion. And when I say family reunion, I mean FAMILY reunion. I’ll explain.
About 10 years ago I was walking through Chinatown for reasons I can’t remember, and wound up passing by a temple–quite randomly, I thought at the time–that was founded by the Colchamiro family.
Another strange thing happened to me a few years back. I was in a local pharmacy picking up my prescription, and when the pharmacist asked for my name, I said "Colchamiro,"Last weekend I went to a family reunion. And when I say family reunion, I mean FAMILY reunion. I’ll explain.
About 10 years ago I was walking through Chinatown for reasons I can’t remember, and wound up passing by a temple–quite randomly, I thought at the time–that was founded by the Colchamiro family.
Another strange thing happened to me a few years back. I was in a local pharmacy picking up my prescription, and when the pharmacist asked for my name, I said "Colchamiro," and started to spell it. A woman standing next to me was giving me the crazy eye just then. She asked me if she heard the name right. Colchamiro. I wasn’t sure if she was a stalker or just a nutball, but reluctantly I confirmed what she heard.
She then went on to tell that she, too, is a Colchamiro (since married with a different last name), and that she had drifted away from the family over the years. She was my dad’s first cousin. She remembered him. And as it turned out, she lived right around the corner from me. But I wound up losing her number and couldn’t remember her married name, so we lost touch before we could connect again.
I had always hoped I’d run into her again, just I had meant to check out the temple. I never did. Until now. On both counts.
The Colchamiro family is just one big family in that, there aren’t various family originations that just happen to share a common family name. If you meet a Colchamiro anywhere in the world, that’s a relative of mine. We’re all connected.
That said, over the generations the family split off into many wings, and while the Colchamiros tend to be sort of clan-like in general, the uber family has been extremely disjointed.
Along the way, a few select relatives decided that it was time to reach out to the family at large, and try and bring us all together. It was really something. We all met at that very temple in Chinatown. More than 200 people showed up, from the very senior citizen all the way down to newborn babies. We weren’t all Colchamiros, some had gotten married and changed the family name, but the blood lines were there.
I saw a few relatives I hadn’t seen in years–including my dad’s cousin, who has since moved to Queens not ten minutes from me! Amazing. All in all, it was a really good day. There we were, all packed into this old temple that could barely hold us, but it did. We made room.
Going forward, I don’t know the Colchamiros will come together, but this was sure a great first step.
