My Grandma

Yesterday, my grandma celebrated her 78th birthday!  I remember 28 years ago when we celebrated her 50th and a card I made for her that said "50 is nifty but aren't you glad you're not 60?"

Man, that truly feels like it was yesterday, and absolutely not at all 28 years ago.  How in the heck can she be that old?  How can I be that old?

One of the things I love about my grandma is that I was her first.  Selfish, right? :)  Being her first grand kid, she celebrated my arrival by drinking a 6 pack of beer by herself in the wee hours of the morning because no one else would get up to celebrate with her.

How cool of a grandma do I have?

But that's not all.  She is one of the single most constants in my life that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I can run to and cry, laugh, rant, whatever I need to do and she will listen to me always with open arms.  She may not always think that my choices are wise, but at the same time, she allows me to learn my own lessons without judgement and always with an open heart.

My grandma was born in 1937.  She has experienced first hand record players, black and white TVs, 8 track cassettes, great big tube televisions, cassette players, computers that take up an entire room to run 500 mb, beta max, floppy disks, VHS, DOS computers, CDs, DVDs, Blu Rays, flat screen TVs, kindles, ipads, rotary phones, touch pad phones, big box car phones, cells phones that were huge then got tiny, smart phones that were tiny then got huge, etc... what I love about my grandma is that she has experienced all of these things.  She may not have always embraced it fully, but I kid you not, she has a smart phone, a smart TV, a lap top, and reads from her kindle all the time.  How flipping awesome is that?

And that is just some of the electronics (she loves her kuerig, too).

Think about what life was like in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, the turn of the century to now....

How far has our society come in such a short time with racial segregation (by the way, one of her good friends in school was black).  How far women in general have come.  I have a 1956 Better Homes and Garden magazine.  Looking at the ads alone, women were meant to be in the home, cooking, cleaning, taking care of the kids, while the men worked- all of the ads portray women in those roles.  Now we see men and women in these roles as well as men and women in working roles.  Before I joined the army, I was working at a home for developmentally disabled older men.  I told one of them, Walter, that I was joining the Army, and he said that I would make a great WAC.  A what?  WAC stands for the Women's Army Corp.  Yep, just like those with darker skin color had their own unit, so did women.  Both groups did the mundane, but necessary, tasks of laundry, cooking, and cleaning.  Walter didn't know that by 1998, when I joined, women were allowed to be in a majority of military fields.

My grandma has lived through so much social, economical, and technical changes in her 78 years of life that it truly makes me wonder what the next 25 years will bring her (that's when she says she will die... at age 103).  In 25 years, she will more than likely be a great great grandma.  Maybe even a great great great grandma.... yikes, that would make me a great grandma then... which could happen if in 6 years when my oldest is 20 (double yikes), and he has a kid, and if that kid has a kid at age 19.... OK, I have to stop.... I'm about to put chastity belts on both my kids and unborn grand kids...

But her being a great great great grandma is plausible.

The thing is, she already is a GREAT, HARDWORKING, FANTASTIC, WONDERFUL, CARING, GIVING, LOVING GRANDMA.

And I truly can't imagine what my life would have been like without her example to follow.

I love you, Grandma, More than you know.