My son and I flew to Edmonton on the weekend for my grandma’s 90th birthday party. She had a fall recently and is still a bit bruised, but that didn’t stop her from partying it up. She outlasted me by at least an hour, and I hear they started cleaning up the room around her.
After ninety years and two long-term relationships, four kids, several foster babies, multiple businesses, nine grandkids, and thirteen great-grandkids, there’s not a lot that phases my grandma. She has the same bemused, off-hand way of discussing everything.
On her home-care help:
“How’s she going to find the sugar if she doesn’t take the blinking lid off the sugar bowl?”
On her nephew’s gender identity:
“Oh yes, he goes by Lisa now.”
On having a New Year’s baby:
“All the doctors were drunk.”
On her accomplishments:
“Well, of all my children and grandchildren, there’s none of them in jail. I can be proud of that.”
Personally, I think she has a wee bit more to be proud of than our lack of incarceration. And here’s hoping I’ve inherited some of her genes.