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My family, if I had to give it an adjective, is elastic. 45 years ago, my parents, my little brother,
and I came over to this country from the Soviet Union, extending the family across continents.
Over the decades, the family, my father really,
stretched to absorb spouses, in-laws, even though they spoke a different language,
children both biological and adopted, ex-spouses who chose to stick around, and eventually grandchildren.
Over those same decades, as in any family, people made bad decisions, said things they hoped no one would remember,
got mad at each other, felt grudges, came around, and the family stretched as needed.
And then it snapped.
Someone did something that bad, that shocking.
That person was my cousin Alan.
He and his mother, my father's sister Lena, came to the U.S.