People sometimes ask me if I’d like to have a family and how many children I’d like to have. “I’d like as many children as my future wife is willing to give birth to,” I usually answer. Then I describe to them a black and white picture I once saw of an elderly Joe Kennedy, the patriarch of the Kennedy family, sitting in a wheel chair surrounded by a dozen or so adoring grandchildren. I think this desire to have a big family comes from living far away from most of my immediate relatives, who all lived in Colombia for most of my life.

Growing up, I’d be jealous of my American-born friends when they would talk about family reunions or trips to a relative’s house that lived in a nearby state. A similar reunion with my family would involve passports, visas, thousands of miles of travel, and thousands of dollars in airline tickets.

I have cousins that I have met on only a handful of occasions. Each meeting was like a snapshot in the timeline of our lives. I remember visiting Colombia at the age of ten or so and playing with my cousin Jose Carlos. We would get along as if we’d grown up together. When Jose Carlos came to visit when we were both about 22 and he was spending a semester at Clemson, I was disappointed because our relationship had changed so much.

Although we were first cousins and as close as you can get in blood ties, I remember playing ping-pong in the basement of my parent’s house and feeling like I was talking to a stranger. We got along fine, but not with the easy laughter of our earlier meetings. We had both changed so much, but unlike cousins that see each other all the time, we did not grow together, recognizing the changes incrementally over the years.

My uncle Alex, my mom’s only brother, is someone with whom I have always been compared. I was a baby the last time he saw me. My mom tells me that we are very much alike, both artistic and laid back. Like him I started out college as an architecture student but changed disciplines after two years. I love it when my mom tells the story of how Uncle Alex drew me sleeping in my crib and used the drawing in an ad he designed for the local newspaper.

My sister has a nose that was a mystery to us all for a long time. It was unlike mine or my parent’s. The closest we’d come to finding a match was my Aunt Mari’s nose in New Jersey, but that felt like a stretch. The case was finally closed when we visited some of my father’s relatives in Soledad, Colombia. We felt as though we’d discovered the Rosetta Stone of my sister’s face when we noticed the same nose on a second cousin. I think my mom sighed in relief, now knowing for certain that my sister hadn’t been switched at birth in the delivery room.

I am thankful because many relatives have begun to move up to the U.S. and Canada from Colombia over the past two or three years. I am excited because we can now begin to build some of those relationships that have been put on hold because of distance. I can only hope for a picture of me someday, sitting in a chair surrounded by dozens of grandchildren and my cousins’ grandchildren. They can watch each other grow up, teasing and supporting each other along the course of their lives, the way it should be.