Last Sunday my wife and I visited at Keltys United Methodist Church where its members were celebrating the church's 110th anniversary. We were there to sit with our cousin, Marie Hanks Parise. Marie is my blood kin, but she claims my wife as well. For a fact, I think she likes my wife better than me.
Most people do.
Marie and my dad were double first cousins, what you get when siblings of one family marry siblings of another. Around East Texas, we simply say that brothers married sisters. We know what we're talking about, though outsiders may tend to think us peculiar. In our case, her father and my grandmother, and my grandfather and her mother, were brothers and sisters. Double first cousins are extra close kin, and she and my dad grew up much like a sister and brother.