Family Tree: The Next Generation

Today I took my daughter to visit my grandmother, Mary Cronin Raynor, for the first time. My cousin had a son last June, but Elena is my grandmother's first great granddaughter. They almost had the same birthday - I went into the hospital on April 5th, my grandmother's 98th birthday, and Elena was born the next morning. My grandmother, god bless her, will probably outlive us all, but at 98, I was afraid she and my daughter would never get a chance to meet. So I was very excited once Elena was cleared by the doctors as being old enough to go out to public places once she hit 2 months. Although we didn't actually make it to the assisted living facility until now, just shy of her turning 3 months. But everything finally went smoothly! Elena took a (very rare) nap today and was on her best behavior - she and Grandma were both so excited! My grandmother is still fairly with it for an almost-centenarian so was asking me all sorts of questions about the baby, and it was so wonderful to see Grandma want to hold the baby and to see her making faces at her and talking to her. In addition to the fact that I had been wanting to visit my grandmother since I hadn't seen her since my baby shower in March, it was a weight off my shoulders for them to finally meet each other - Grandma's the one who got me interested in genealogy and laid the groundwork for not only the research on my mother's side of the family tree but also some of my dad's branches, so I think it was especially meaningful for both of us for her to meet one of the members of the next generation, one of the next budding branches on our tree.

Three generations of Marys

Great-grandma and Elena finally meet!

98 years and 1 day apart...but finally close enough to hold hands!