Happy Reunion

We are about to travel nearly a thousand miles to go and celebrate the 90th birthday of my very dear Grandmother. It's a celebration of quite an amazing life. I didn't have the opportunity to live near grandma as a child, but my mother always made a point to visit her at least once a year and I have always tried to keep in touch with her through letters. I am so looking forward to the reunion with her and the rest of the family that will join us.

My grandma was a war bride (WWII) to a handsome man. They had 12 beautiful children together and struggled to make ends meet. Grandma did her best to stretch out the food and money. My mother tells me stories of grandma buying sacks of potatoes and her cutting them up and making fried potatoes or home made fries and that would be dinner for the night because that is all they had. A special treat would be ice cream, of which was cut into 12 peices, enough for all the kids to have a small taste. They had an out house and who knows what the substitute for toilet paper was! There came a point when grandma started taking all the kids to church. Grandma became a Christian and the children followed in her footsteps.

The most impressive thing to me is the children she raised. None of them are perfect and have gone through their own growing lessons as we all do in life, but there is something that seems magical to me that happens when we all get together. Aunts, Uncles, cousins and cousins and cousins, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers...there is one person that unites all of us and that is grandma. I feel close to her with each letter, birthday card, and every other kind of card we all recieve from her every year. She sends them to everyone in the family. That's unbelivable considering how many are in the family and I've lost count.

Anyway, can't wait to see you, grandma!