My cousin Susan was never completely weaned. What I mean by that is, while dependence on her mother's breastmilk as a primary source of sustenance ended about when you would expect it to, it remained as an additional option amongst more conventional snack foods right up until her high school graduation, and even then, the only reason she was ever likely to finally stop drinking it was because of the distance that college would inevitably put between her and her only two milk providers.
I say two because, to make matters even more startling, her older sister Danica, who was also no stranger to suckling far beyond infancy, had induced lactation in herself and gotten into the habit of breastfeeding Susan whenever she happened to be more readily available than their mother Liz. With two lactating elders in the family, my youngest cousin never had to look far whenever she either craved breastmilk specifically or just found it to be the most convenient way to quickly relieve and/or delay hunger.
Given how fatty the stuff is and how much of it Danica and Susan tend to consume on the average day, I sometimes wonder how easily they might have become overweight. Diminutive stature seems to run in Aunt Liz's branch of the family, probably resulting from the outlier runt of our grandparents' litter marrying a man whose entire family was on the short side. Nevertheless, aside from each of them being about six of her own heads tall rather than the average ratio of seven, all three of my favorite relatives were quite well-proportioned. At worst, Susan and Danica may have been a bit stocky, but given the male and occasional lesbian admiration they seemed to attract, it definitely wasn't in an unattractive way at all.
If anything, their stockiness probably enhanced the contours of their butts and breasts, and their unique mixture of Italian and Latina traits made their faces and skin tones nothing to shrug at either. As for me, I was significantly taller than all of them, but proportional to my height, I had a similarly "sturdy build," as Aunt Liz once put it. The Italian side that I shared with my cousins was complemented in my case with a generous dose of Japanese from my mother's side, giving me an exotic look that I'll admit to being rather proud of. Plus, both relatives and friends have expressed playful jealousy over my curves and complexion, and they did so often enough that I eventually accepted, albeit reluctantly, that I too could turn my fair share of heads.
By the time each sister turned 18, Susan and Danica thoroughly understood that most other people were likely to react with squeamishness at best and disgust at worst if they weren't at least very careful about whom they disclosed their milky habits to. My aunt made sure of that. To this day, the younger one's best friend Nella is the only person outside the family who knows. Nella was predictably shocked and creeped out at first, but within about a month, she got used to it. It probably helped more than anything to hear Susan, Danica, and their mother describe the experience as just a very unusual means of purely familial bonding. Susan's longtime bestie was understandably skeptical at first, but the genuinely innocent contentment in their voices and faces as they described it eventually convinced her. By the time they were beginning to submit college applications, Susan could quite casually mention a nursing session to Nella without evoking any more of a reaction than if she'd mentioned having a granola bar or energy drink instead.
Nevertheless, though Danica and Susan understood the stance of society at large, they sometimes admitted to having difficulty putting themselves completely in an outsider's shoes with respect to their milky habits. To them, feasting at a family member's nipple at any age was just normal. "No, you almost certainly can't live on it past infancy, but most doctors agree that breastmilk still has at least some health benefits no matter how old you are," Susan said once. "For one thing, a lactating woman's body can detect pathogens starting to infect the person she's feeding and put the corresponding antibodies into the milk preemptively. That's probably why I hardly ever get sick and don't stay sick for long whenever I do." I could only giggle at her ability to be so clinical about it, but then again, Susan was about as nerdy as I was, so I guess I should've expected that.
I was always a bit envious of my cousins. My own mother was rather distant and old-fashioned, and although Aunt Liz would've easily qualified as being warmer and more nurturing even if she had totally weaned her daughters, the disparity was never as symbolically obvious as whenever I saw her breastfeeding Danica and/or Susan. It wasn't uncommon for her to nourish one sister from each breast at the same time. It wasn't even unheard of for mother and daughters to engage in what one might call nested nursing.
On at least one occasion that I witnessed just in the last half of our senior year, Susan came to her mother with a milky hankering only to find that Danica apparently had similar ideas. Aunt Liz was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the family room, moaning softly while her firstborn lazily lay with her head in her mother's lap and suckled thirstily at the left nipple. Purring in satisfaction, Danica still apparently managed to hear my aunt inform Susan that the right reservoir had already been drained. Without even pausing her own indulgence, the older sister simply pulled her T-shirt up to offer tasty nourishment to the younger one, who then crouched beside her with a grateful smile, latched on to the nearest areola, and immediately began gorging herself to the point that I even heard her lips smacking against the firm mound from which she drank.
We all lived only a few blocks apart, so I visited these relatives of mine almost every day, and the three of us girls grew very close over the years. My aunt was often more of a mother to me than her sister-in-law, and for my eighteenth birthday, I exercised my new autonomy by mustering up the courage to ask if I could try some breastmilk myself. She was visibly touched as she simply smiled and wordlessly started unbuttoning her shirt. I remember suddenly feeling nervous as she led me to sit down on the couch while she stood between my legs and finally exposed her breasts. I hesitated for just a moment before shyly leaning in and taking a nipple between my lips as I'd seen my cousins do so many times.
As I sucked for the first time, I squeaked as I felt a stream of sweet and warm milk flow into my mouth. I nibbled on the areola and let the milk pool in my mouth before moaning involuntarily as I took my first swallow, barely hearing Aunt Liz's own contented hum as I repeated the process and quickly settled into a suckling rhythm. Between the satisfying taste of the milk itself and the deep feeling of closeness with my aunt, I fully understood the appeal!
