A Day In Jupiter

I've just recently been on a three day outing with my cousin in Jupiter, Florida. Well, it's not much of an outing since we've been here at his mom's house. But once in a while we'd hit the road and check out a few spots.

Jupiter, Florida is a city where many would find it tempting to joke about it's title. Mostly anyone can't resist interrupting without referencing the 5th planet from the sun. So please, lets put that aside.

My stay here has been a bit interesting. Mostly fun when I've had the opportunity to spend more time with my cousin Chris. Times are tough and money isn't cycling through him as it once did. This family is on my mother's side. Her mother's sister currently lives here. They resided in New York for 30 years and now they're residing in South Florida. Chris is here to help take care of my grand aunt along with her husband who's now suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Chris is one of my favorite cousins since he is very well informed of political jargon, as well as a spiritually attuned meditation practitioner.

One particular reason why I'm writing this blog is to comment on my Tia Blanca. She's now turning 68 this coming month and I've neglected to ask her all these years about my origins. So this time around, I had breakfast with her and we started talking about our family's history.

She remembers names and stories of most of my ancestry dating back to the time of the Depression. I never knew some of my family members were from Spain. I only heard that I had a great-grandfather who came from there, and that he was almost 7-feet tall. My brother, it is believed, inherited some of those traits because he too is a tall individual. This brings to mind the power of genetic inheritance. Respectfully, I have a deep appreciation for all the family members that passed on, but I cannot help but marvel at the mechanism that makes us living creatures - sexual reproduction.

It took 3 generations for my great-grandfather's gene for height to be manifested in my brother's genes. Upon seeing this picture of my great-grandfather, I couldn't think of anyone else except Ivan.

So, my most profound experience of this scientific revelation is that we cannot escape the effectiveness of nature. As complex as the genetic code is, as mysterious as the skipping of generations might be, it is a fact that these phenomenon occur in nature regardless of what species you are.