forever

 Today is the day. A branch is added to the family tree. How many hundreds of thousands of lives will be forever connected? There is no telling. With all our modern advances analyzing DNA and picking out the markers the numbers are astronomical. Just how many ancestors do you have? You are connected to each one of them and they to you. If you went back ten generations, about two hundred years or so, each generation being about twenty years, you would have 1,096 grandparents! Yes, that's the truth of it and that doesn't take into account stepparents. How many descendants from those 1,096? 

 Of those 1,096 individuals exactly half were "grafted" onto the tree. We call that marriage. It's the traditional method of adding branches to the tree. Now we could argue and debate just what branch constitutes the trunk of that tree, but tradition has it the male side. Setting aside any religious teachings it's the answer to which came first, the chicken or the egg.  The chicken is the answer. But all the descendants belong to the same flock. The big goal in ancestry is to link everyone to a single set of parents. The first tree! I'll be welcoming a new branch today as my grandson gets married. The big question is who are the in-laws? All sides are eyeing the other. Just because the principal parties are in love, enamored of each other, doesn't mean the in-laws will be. Wedding receptions can be like an uneasy truce, can you trust the others? It must be remembered you are the others! Yes, it isn't a one-way street.

 It must be remembered that weddings are about the future, not the past. The wedding is simply the beginning. The branch has been grafted to the tree and it's the start of new growth. It's often said the nut doesn't fall far from the tree. That's true and it means that each new generation will inherit the characteristics and traits from the previous. New growth has to be nurtured, cared for, and protected. That's true with a marriage as well. Over time it will mature, gain strength and stand freely on its' own merits. From that new generations, new branches, will sprout and the growth continues. 

 It isn't really about names, it's about lineage. Still the only way we have had to delineate that was by names. That was until the 21st century when the human genome was first completely mapped. Twenty-three years into the century and literally millions of humans can now be scientifically linked through that process. No names required, only a sample of that DNA. The question now is whether that DNA will create an entitlement. It is certainly being employed in a great number of court cases today. It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt just who fathered the child! If I can prove my descendance from a billionaire, should I be entitled to a cut of the estate? The question remains to be answered by the courts. 

 I don't believe that it should. Marriage, love and descendants are not dependent upon DNA. DNA is not the creation of life, just the building block. It is the architect, the builder, that creates life. Some call him God, or the divine being. Families are created and grown in that manner, through love. Descendants aren't necessarily created in that way at all. It is the intangibles, the undefined, the mystery of love that creates families. And that is what a marriage is all about. New growth, new life, new beginnings rooted in the old. The new growing in the shade of the old. It's an exciting time for the new and a pensive time for the old. The old knowing the road ahead isn't always paved or downhill! The young only see the highway. My wish, my hope, my desire is that they travel that road. May they overcome every obstacle, navigate every twist and turn and reach their final destination together. Then they can rest. Then they can provide that shade to the next generation, ever connected, always loved. Love is the greatest connection of all. There is no mapping that, no analyzing it, it exists and that is all we know about that. It exists as long as we believe it exists. It lives as long as we live it.