When my first grandchild was born, I found it interesting how you can love a newborn so much.  Throughout his life, we’ll share DNA, and the same last name.

He’ll carry our family name down the generational rivers entering a sea of names.  Maybe it’s just a man thing, but that’s downright satisfying!

I looked back at a flash drive of old family pictures that included a scan of an article my grandfather wrote in 1974.  My Grandpa is my grandson’s Great, Great Grandfather.

He only had a 6th grade education, so to write a life summary and family history is phenomenal!  It was exhilarating to read!

The four pages anchored a stake in the bedrock of personal roots.  Grandpa described how his Grandpa, my Great, Great Grandfather, came from Czechoslovakia in 1870 on a ship to America.

He worked any job he could find to make a new life, in a new country, and eventually sent money across the ocean to his sweetheart.  With that money, she also came to the States to start a new life with him.

If either one hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here, at least, not as me, and neither would my grandson.  It’s like looking back in a time mirror and seeing people I’ve never met, yet their DNA flows in my blood.

How awesomely crazy would it be to go back in time and visit with them, to understand their thoughts, motivations, dreams!  I can only imagine!

On the other hand, I wonder if on March 4, 2071, when my first grandson is exactly the same age as I am today, will he look back on time and wonder about it too?

What will he think?  What will he want to ask, to know?  And what will his world be like? 

I wish I could know, or even reasonably imagine, what his grandchildren will think?  Will they know, or even care, that their Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather came over on a ship to America?

The fact is, I’ll never know grandson’s grandchildren, just like Grandpa never knew mine.

Even so, my DNA, and Grandpa’s, and Great, Great Grandpa’s will still be flowing in their blood, and our last name will be on certificates of birth — and death.

And so it goes, a new life covering an old life, as age to age flows until the day we all, regardless of when we lived, will kneel and bow before the Rock of Ages.

So how does it fit in the grand design?  I don’t know. 

I do know though that a long chain of generations, circumstances and events came together to form me,  you, all of us.   

Any way you slice, dice or chop it, there’s no way to fully understand how we each came to be, yet, here we are.