Celebrating 90

We spent time over the past several days celebrating my grandma's 90th birthday. Her birthday is Feb. 28, and I was sad that work meetings kept me from seeing her on that day. Regardless, the boys and I took her flowers on Thursday evening - a few yellow tulips to brighten her room.

 My grandma holds a special spot in my heart. I grew up with her house just across the backyard. I ran over there to play, to snack, to jabber, to help dig potatoes, to eat a second supper and to learn so many things by simply watching her. Certain hymns remind me of listening to her play piano and sing, certain TV shows remind me of eating a second supper with my grandparents while "The Lawrence Welk Show" entertained us.

And now I live in her house, the house she lived in nearly all of her life. I garden in the space that was merely her flower garden, let alone her vegetable garden. I smell her Cover Girl liquid foundation in the drawer by the back sink as if it were still in there.

I try to make time each Friday to visit her. It doesn't always happen, and sometimes she's busy playing Memory/Matching game or she's at Read Aloud Time. But often we visit and look at old photos. She always knows who I am, but otherwise the quality of her memory just depends on the day. I'm thankful that she is pleasant, that her eyes and ears work well and that she still has her sense of humor.

Last week we talked about what she planned to plant in her garden this year. Sometimes I show her my cellphone and she's amazed that it can take pictures. She's 90 and it was wonderful to celebrate her birthday on Sunday.

We looked at lots of old slides and learned about the changes made to this old house we live in and the yard that surrounds us. It's good to look back and appreciate the time, blood, sweat and tears given to build and grow this farm. The back-breaking labor that was put into making it what it is today is humbling.

And while this house is simply a house, an old (and let's be honest, crumbling) structure it is a place where thousands of memories have been and continue to be made. It's a place that grandma intends to return to, yet a moment later when I tell her that I live in her house now she's always happy for us.

She didn't always remember why we were together on Sunday. But she sang along and knew nearly every word by heart of the old hymns we sang . In every photo she was in during the slide show, she was working. Always working on something - milking, cooking, typing, sewing - always doing.
It felt a bit odd celebrating her birthday. She is present and yet so much of the grandma I've always known is gone. My other grandparents died when their bodies failed them long before their brains/memory had. And grandma is just the opposite. I cherish my times with her, appreciating her life example all the more now that I'm an adult/mother/farm wife.