Only You

It's Sunday night, and we are back from the woods. There was much walking and stick-throwing for the dog, and general communing with nature and crispness.

My mother had a paint-by-numbers picture up there, and I spent 73,000 hours working on it. It is supposed to be the kind of thing that anyone who comes to visit the cabin gets to work on, but that annoyed me. After the 47th hour, this painting was mine. I did not want any yahoo up there messing up the cardinal or the light in the window.

I am an only child, did I mention that?

And actually, speaking of which, I would like your opinion on this scenario. Please note that I have to tell you that I bought chairs for our kitchen table and my mother bought me clothes and SHOES, but first I wanted to ask about this.

My mother has a cousin, also an only child, who has the same name as me. Ever since I was born, this poor cousin has been "Big June" while I got to be "Little June." If I were her I would hate me.

At any rate, Big June and her husband also came to said cabin on Saturday. They walked in. We said our hellos. The men went outside to move a boat or some manly thing. Big June found a photo album and started looking at it. I was maybe seven feet away, painting my paint-by-numbers kit. For a lovely three minutes, we did this.

Me: [Paint paint paint.]
Big June: [Peruse peruse peruse.]

All of a sudden my mother came in, chatting like a magpie. "Have you two looked at that lake? And those colors! You should have seen it this morning! It looked like the trees were on fire! Oh!"

Me: [...paint paint paint...]
Big June: [...peruse peruse peruse...]

After a minute or two, my mother came back in, this time from the kitchen. "We have pie! Do either of you want pie!? It's blueberry! It has real filling! There's coffee! Do you want to walk down by that lake? I'll be outside if you want to walk down there."

She left, and after a while Big June, never looking up from her album, said, "She wants to talk."

"I KNOW," I agreed heavily. We were appalled at this idea. It was as if my poor mother, who just wanted to converse with her out-of-town daughter and her guest, had suggested we all strip naked, make bikinis out of metal Jello molds, and plunge into the icy lake.

"I think this is an only child thing," I told Big June. My mother comes from a loud family of five.

So, is that it? Are we happy to be silent together because we have no siblings? Are there people from giant loud families who also enjoy their quiet time? Does quiet time equal "we aren't having fun" for you? Or are Big June and I just huge bitches?

I would like to hear from people on both sides of this family fence.