The flip side of yesterday’s story. My great-grandfather had ten daughters and no sons who made it past childhood to carry on his name.

My freshman year of college, my roommate was dating a guy I really didn’t care for.

I was, for the first time in my life, within accessible distance of the annual reunion of that great-grandfather’s descendents, held around his November birthday.  He was born in 1856. Gram, born in 1899, was his last surviving child and I wanted to meet all these people I’d heard about all my life and see the cousins I knew, too.

I don’t remember how I got a ride an hour north; I just remember walking into the warm light of the building from the cold dark outside, and, two steps right there behind me, the door opening up again…

That “We’re all each others’ brothers and sisters” line? I learned to start reminding myself that on that night. Kay’s boyfriend and I stared a moment and then said to each other in unison, “You’re not a Grant, are you?”