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A few weeks ago my phone buzzed and a reminder lit up the screen. "Call Gram." It was January 9th, her birthday. The catch is this is the second birthday she hasn't been around. She died in 2016 but I hadn't gotten around to deleting the reminder. I rarely missed calling her on her birthday and being that she lived in the same town as me (and was a block away neighbor for 5 years) I often physically visited her for the occasion too. One January I was in England for the month so I made sure to call her before I left. I was not about to let a trip halfway across the world get in the way of telling her happy birthday.
Grandma Evy was always special to me: she used to babysit my brother and I when we were younger. Our parents would go out for the evening or have a school function that we did not attend and Grandma Evy was the go-to option. Grandma loved babysitting. She knew when all the parties were at the country club and would call to offer her services for an evening and inquire about my parents' attendance. For five years we were essentially neighbors: we could see what channel she was watching on her TV. She used to walk to our house and carry her cordless phone in her pocket and still get reception at our house. She let us play fun handheld gambling games at her apartment; she had the coolest set of scarves and hankies and handbags around. I was envious of the collection. She made us chocolate pudding each time we came over, complete with whip cream on top. I had my own special pink tea cup I used at her house. She set up her card table in the living room with our coloring books and crayons (and on off chance she got busy and we had to get our own stuff out, the crayons were in the medicine cabinet at eye level). Every birthday card she sent had your age in quotation marks and it made us smile. She was incredibly self-conscious of her hair (god forbid we see it messy) and never left home without her rain bonnet if there was even the slightest chance of a sprinkle.
She was nothing short of quirky too. She and her brother lived in the same apartment complex and each had a subscription to a newspaper; they would meet midday and swap papers in the apartment parking lot so that neither one had to buy both. She was an avid soap opera watcher and would call her sisters to get their takes on the events of the episode. She always claimed she wanted to be cremated because she was claustrophobic and didn't "want to be trapped in that box." Truth be told I don't think she wanted to relinquish control of her hair to a stranger without providing input. She never learned to drive so we often joked about putting her in drivers education in her 80s. She never lied and was a quiet little thing. She was never much for a full smile but always had a pleasant smirk on her face. In my eyes she was special and did everything flawlessly.
During all her years of babysitting us in her 80s my parents had to prep us in case she died while she was "on the clock." There was a whole plan of what my brother and I each had do, complete with dialing 911 and getting a neighbor. In hindsight, we had nothing to worry about because we were both in college when she died. I always wanted to submit her picture to be on the Smucker's celebration on the Today Show. Alas, she was a handful of months short of it. She was the cutest little old lady I ever knew.
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Great-grandparents are extra special. Grandparents are fun but there is something especially cool about hanging out with the oldest person you know with whom you magically share DNA. These people know so much more about life and your family; they know all the family secrets and memories. Cherish whatever ancestors you have in your life. I wish John good luck with his new endeavor and all future great-grandparents-those relationships are irreplaceable.
