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| Ingrid, Freya, Charlotte |
On our East Coast trip this summer, we spent time with family...the folks who share our DNA, our history. And other people's DNA, history...that is what we are made of, after all, combinations and recombinations of the past...moving into a future.
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| Ingrid, Freya |
Freya is the most recent addition....well, but not really. When Jose married Nelci this past spring in the Dominican Republic, we acquired Alejandro, her three year old son. So families expand by birth, marriage, sometimes just hanging around for a long time...some of the "uncles" and "aunts" I knew as a child were really just good, deep friends of my parents.
Families also get smaller...death, movement away, the end of sending Christmas cards, the dropping off of marriage vows...so there is the constant ebb and flow of family units. In part the expansion (the children of children of children) spreads us out over distance and time, lessens the bonds, forms other units.
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| Freya |
So as Freya learns to crawl, to walk, to climb steps, to "go away from" as well as "go toward," she will possibly carry the family...this collection of genes, DNA, history...into the unfolding future, one we can not see and one, from whose distance, others would look back and ask, "Hmmm....wonder what they were like."
