#52Ancestors: #FourGenerations Photo

I had an entirely different photo in mind for this week's #52Ancestors prompt but then I saw the sweetest meme video, captured by generations of families around the world, #FourGenerations. The name says it all, four generations gathered together culminating with the oldest generation. The years contained in those four generations is amazing to consider and their enthusiasm for being together is infectious. The meme began in China but has spread to all four corners of the globe. Watching their smiling, laughing faces it's easy to see "family is family" is a universal truth.

Slightly less enthusiastic is my own reaction to being part of a four-generation photograph when I was about four years old. I'm not sure what was happening that made me a good candidate for toddler anger management, but the photo below is of me, my mother, her mother, and her mother! An unbroken mitochondrial line! My great-grandmother traveled from Idaho to Washington for Christmas, I believe, several months after my parents returned from being posted overseas for three years. In the intervening period, they had acquired my brother and me. What the photo doesn't convey is that in her youth my great-grandmother had the same copper red hair as my mother did. My grandmother was a brunette, like her grandmother and as was I. I broke the chain, but if I'd had a daughter I always secretly hoped for another every-other-generation ginger!

What I love about multigenerational photos is the opportunity to really examine faces for similarities. Who has the same nose? Eyes? Smile? Oh, DNA results are great, and all, showing with scientific proof your connection to your parents, siblings and others, which satisfies our intellect. But it is the physical expression of those genes (phenotypes for science-types) that really speaks to our hearts in identifying the visible signs of that connectivity. 

Do you have four living generations in your family? Don't wait, join the wave and capture your #FourGenerations while you can. It will become a treasured memento for your family and future generations.