An old picture

This is a snapshot (remember that word?) I recently scanned into my computer. It is of my extended family on my father's side, before a few other children were born. I am on the right, on the floor, sitting pretty in my black and white (really) window pane plaid, sleeveless dress that I loved, a flower in my hair. I was probably 5. My brother, Bob, sits on my Grandpa's lap. On the left is my grandmother, Elizabeth. I barely knew her because besides being more at home in Greek than English, she was also schizophrenic, and was often in the hospital. Grandpa paid for it out of his own pocket, because he had no hospitalization (they didn't call it health insurance, then). She must have been in her early 50's in this picture, younger than I am now. And yet she was an old Greek lady, in a housedress, hair pulled back. She would smoke, sitting on the back stoop, legs apart, just like I saw women in Greece do when I visited there 27 years later. It was an embarrassment to her Americanized children.
Behind them is my aunt Katherine holding her daughter Diane (a medical technician for many years, now), my Dad with Kitty's son, David (a researcher in infectious disease at the Cleveland Clinic, now) and my mom, not looking very happy, as she usually did in pictures.
This snapshot is a picture of old and new. Grandma and Grandpa came from Asia Minor, having to leave home to avoid being killed, as were their families by Ataturk's army, fulfilling the "dream" of "Turkey for the Turks". Their marriage was arranged. Grandpa served under Pershing in the U.S. Army in France during WWI, was wounded, and given citizenship. He still, in this picture, was cooking for a living t his cousin's lunch counter in a seedier part of downtown Cleveland. My Dad was an engineer, courtesy of the U.S. Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps, which he stumbled into after enlistment because they asked him to take a test, which he passed; they sent him to Yale.
Bob is now a Clinical Social Worker, and I a teacher of children, and people who teach children. Grandpa and Grandma died at 77 and 64, respectively. Mom and Dad are 81 and 82. Perhaps we of the "younger generation" (I haven't even mentioned our children!) will live longer than any of them. I hope we will be as strong and faithful.