The First Day of the New Year: Family Ties.

We all congregated at my grandmother's: my aunts, my uncles, my cousins and their children. My grandmother smiled, surrounded by her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Then all the cameras came out and family portraits were taken.

Someone rigged up a digital photo-viewer and they had somehow uploaded pictures from a long time ago, when my cousins and I were still kids, our parents still young. I saw myself, when I was ten or eleven, and suffered a moment of embarrassment, cringing.

But yes, we have all grown up, our parents older. We have children of our own.

I love all these pictures, visual history for our children and their children. This is your grandmother. That is your granduncle. This is your cousin.

We have grown up. The family ties are still as strong.