When a girl grows up

My grandma recently turned 100 years old. Can you believe it? o-n-e-h-u-n-d-r-e-d! 10x10. Maybe you know people that experienced but it’s always seemed to me like such a rare gift. My grandmother, Grace Bishop Simkins, is our family’s singular gift. I love great matrons. Grandma Grace is the epitome of vivacity in mind and body and will and temperament.

You see, my grandma has this laugh, this delicious laugh. Someone once described mylaugh as needing a chair of its own (I’m paraphrasing without the author’s eloquence) but it made me think of my grandma’s laugh; it tickles and rebounds through the space of a room and ones heart with such joypower. Happy, enlightened, life-living power that just won’t sit still – it RICOCHETS!

My super-duper cousins compiled some of my grandma’s writings into a memoir and titled the collection, “Living with Grace”. Such a lovely double meaning.

We all adore her – wouldn’t it be a comfort to know that later in life you will eventually be adored, revered and celebrated?

Lets all live for it!!
Not just for self-serving purposes.

Here’s an important crux to happy family units:

Because of who Grace Bishop Simkins IS, we are closer to each other -- we all want very much to be in her presence, to care for her, to LOVE her. She is that awesome. She is that powerful. We then discover each other and our common link and how much she is reflected in each of us. I love you because I love her. Love works that way sometimes.

Grandma, I hope you know that we/I feel this way about you. I salute you and all that you’ve lived and struggled and found joy in. I hope that one day I’ll know more about your life and that it will inform me in ways that will be a credit to you. I like that old saying, to be a “credit” to somebody.

I love you myfamily and I wish I was there celebrating with you.