meet my family

Rummaging through old, very old photos of relatives and people, most of whom I don't know who they are, most of them I've never met, I stumbled over this one. And it tugs at my heart strings in a special way.

Meet my relatives, part of my blood line - my great grandmother and great grandfather (both gone well before I was born) and my great aunt Elsa, my grandmother Eleonora and, standing, my great aunt Greta. The three latter I spent a lot of time with during my childhood.

And that wasn't always a good experience, for different reasons. Without going into details I believe I had rather rose-tinted figurative glasses on when it comes to spending time with those old aunts as a child, because most everything I can remember was awesome and joyous. In hindsight and with other people's stories they weren't very nice ladies, at all. But I'm still glad I pretty much only have good memories of good times and good food.

What I see and feel when I look at this old, but still in rather good quality, photo is -

~ A lot of family resemblance from my great grandmother, grandmother, my mother and a dash of it in me.
~ It's so easy to discern who's who of the three sisters in this picture, because they looked so much alike as old women, their facial expressions remained the same. Whether that's a good or bad or neutral thing, I don't know.
~ I'm guessing the great grandparents were in their late 20ies, early 30ies when the photo was taken. Little did they know that life would be hard, as life was then for most everyone. Growing old before their time. They were probably old already when at my age. Ungraspable.
~ The photographer's name was H. Törnbladh and his studio was at Brännkyrkagatan (Brännkyrka street) in Stockholm. Proof that I am indeed a stockholmer since generations. And at that street I still have relatives who live, nearly 150 years later. The realization it is a small world and that indeed everything is connected.

The photo also makes me think a lot about all the things I don't know about my line of descent. That looking into genealogy would be rather interesting, giving a sense of connection to the past, what, who, made me the person I am, at least from a genetic point of view. So much history I am clueless about. Maybe I should...