Give Me A High Five

One morning, as I opened my Facebook page this adorable picture shot out at me.  Being raised across the world in Israel, my little cousin was shown wearing raspberries as thimbles. 

Her parents come from Kursk, Ukraine; the language on their Facebook page is Russian.  Even her name is not spelled out in English.  

When I think about parenting, I tend to think of how my parents raised me, not how I performed in that role.  Parenting evolves in different generations and is done differently in various countries.  

After seeing this picture, the thoughts of our ancestry overwhelmed me.  Will my second cousin three times removed and I ever have the opportunity to meet?  I'm sure that she will know about me from my family tree work and I am following her growth through Facebook pages.

Someday, I hope she will read my book with quotes from her own paternal great-grandfather's memoir.  He was my second cousin and while we grew up in a parallel universe we were fortunate to find one another.  Our mutual love for family and the importance of documentation had us as close as could be for cousins who never met.  

Some people reading this will think that the child will make a mess with the juicy red raspberries or that she's wasting food while others go hungry.  How many of us were told to finish everything on our plates because people were starving in faraway lands?  When I look at the picture I think to myself, "Look at that punim, that's my little cousin and she's doing schtick with raspberries...is she precious or what?"