Generations

"I found out today that Julia Child is one of my student's great-great aunt!" my friend Mary told me today.

I was impressed, but then I started questioning how closely they were actually related. "So she was his great-grandmother or great-grandfather's sister?" I mused. "By blood or marriage?"

Mary told me she would investigate further, but we both agreed it was pretty cool. 

As luck would have it, I have a picture of my own great-grandmother on the desktop of my computer. I recently came across it while browsing the hints on my genealogy website. A stark black and white photo, she had it taken for her passport in 1919. Her head is tilted and the entire left side of her face is in shadow, but it is the first image I ever recall seeing of my father's grandmother, who died just 4 years before I was born, and I'm pretty sure I never met any of her siblings. 

These days, great-grandparents are quite common; almost all of my mother's friends had "great-grands" as they called the children of their grandchildren. I suppose it wouldn't be uncommon for those little ones to know the brothers and sisters of their great-grandparents, especially in a close family. And when I consider myself as a middle generation, rather than on either end of this familial spectrum, great-great aunts don't really seem so distant. My older nephews are both in their mid-to-late twenties, and were they to have any children, then my own dear Aunt Harriett would be their great-great aunt, not such a vast span at all.