Lineage

Last weekend my Aunt Margaret turned ninety years old. For our family that is pretty amazing, one for the record books.
Her four children, my first cousins, planned the celebration. On Saturday night many of us, twenty-eight strong, gathered together for a dinner party at Wrightsville Beach. Except for the spouses, everyone at the long tables was a direct descendent of my grandparents. The three youngest who were present would have been their great-great-grandchildren. I didn't know my great-great-grandparents since they died before I was born. These children will not know theirs because they have passed on, but I am old enough to have known them well during the late middle and older years of their lives. 
This photo of them was taken in 1906, long before they married.
The older I get, the more see myself as a link in a chain, an apple on the family tree, as my grandparents are now.