Over the years from time to time I have worked on my family tree.  With familyecho.com, I have now mapped it out, and with a total of forty seven entries have taken it to the level of my great great great grandparents on my father's mother's father's parents' side, if you can follow that.  My great great greats were Sarah Stein and Solomon Potak, and Cecil Cohen and Samuel Orloff, who were born who knows where in the early 1800s.   I thought that was going pretty far back, until I looked at Prince William's family tree.  He can trace his back to 1066. That's a lot of birthdays to remember.

It is interesting to see all of my ancestor's family names.  What has become diluted into me includes Sarrows, Schneiders, Orloffs, Kaminers, Rudas, Stultzs, Horowitzs, Potaks, Steins, Cohens, and many more I do not even know.  I know very little about any of them.  If they only had Facebook in the 1800s I could learn so much.  Instead I have to rely on stories from my aunts, who themselves know little beyond their own grandparents.

The oldest relatives I knew were my great grandparents, Ida and Benjamin Schneider.  I only remember my Poppa in a wheelchair, barely able to speak.  And my Momma, Ida, was a tiny woman who had such strong glasses her eyes looked like balloons.  I can still though hear her voice in my head.

All these names floating on the page of my family tree were real people, with their own lives, stories and families.  Collectively they had so many descendants, of which I am but one.

You should hug everyone you meet.  They might just be your distant cousin.