The first real totem pole I saw was in Vancouver before we took a cruise which toured the Inside Passage.  I was with my future husband and his maternal side of the family.  We got to see totem poles up close in national forests as well as in museums.  They are monumental pillars carved with figures by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast in the United States and in Canada’s western province, British Columbia.  The word “totem” most likely comes from the Ojibwe meaning kinship group.  Among other things, they tell the stories of clan lineages.  I came in and got this shot as two sets of chocolate brown eyes looked at me with love.  Our little one had been giggling as my beloved was attempting to stand with her, all while she was shrieking and hanging onto him by fistfuls of his hair.  I looked at them full of love and thought, this is my clan, and this is my lineage.  The Irish born writer George Bernard Shaw said, “A happy family is but an earlier heaven.”  An earlier heaven indeed; we need to add in the wolfies and the cats but otherwise this is the story of my family totem pole.