Relative communication

It had been several years since I met Uncle. The last time I saw him my Japanese wasn't good enough to communicate very well. Now it has improved, so I'd been looking forward to chatting with him.

Today I discovered that he has gone rather deaf. This just happened in the last couple of years, apparently.

Sample conversation:

"Does your mother miss you? Where does she live?"

"SHE'S IN NEW ZEALAND."

"Finland? What's she doing there? Isn't it cold?"

I did, however, manage to communicate quite well with his children and grandchildren. The younger girls (his granddaughters) were a bit nervous of me until I said something insulting to The Man in bad Japanese. After that they relaxed and stopped doing the 'best behaviour' thing.

What are they to me, anyway? My cousins-in-law? I'm never sure about these things. In fact, earlier this year I suddenly realised, from some things he told me about his family, that a man who works in the office at a university where I teach is my ex-step-brother-in-law. This is, of course, a completely meaningless relationship, so I didn't say anything. As far as I know he isn't even aware of the connection. We chat quite often and I think he would have mentioned it if he knew.

It's interesting the words we have and don't have for various relationships. We don't have a word for 'uncle's wife' that will distinguish her from 'parent's sister'. They're both 'aunt', even though one is a blood relationship and the other isn't. Same for uncle. I wonder why that is? And if your blood-uncle divorces his wife and marries again, is his ex-wife your ex-aunt, or is she still your aunt?

Actually, I did communicate with Uncle (Uncle-in-law?) quite well, as long as I let him do most of the talking. The Man, who has a louder voice than me, clarified when things went awry. I nodded and waved my arms around a lot.

We drank lots of green tea.