12.15.09
Grandma’s Birthday
Today is my Grandmother’s 97th birthday. Yes, she’s almost as old as Methusalah. But seriously, I am grateful. She has her difficult days, and she can’t get around the way she used to, but she’s still here. Of course, for me, there’s the guilt. I wish I could have been in Georgia to help her celebrate. Instead, I had to join in on the celebration by phone. There was a special lunch with enough cake and ice cream for all of her friends, she told me. Her voice sounded happy. It made me smile. However, there was one gift she didn’t like: a clock.
“I don’t know who got me this clock, but I don’t like it when people give me things like that. I’m not going to live long. I don’t need anything like that,” she says.
I’m glad I didn’t give it to her, but it reminds me of another thing I’ve learned about the elderly: they have a totally different concept of time than we do. Everything is always now!
“Did you send me that… article you wrote yet?”
I pause, hating to disappoint my Grandmother since the answer is no. Of course, by the same token, she had just asked me over the weekend, and we all know post offices are closed on Sundays (not counting at the airport, of course, but don’t tell her!).
“No, Grandmother, but I’ll send it to you,” I say weakly.
That was this morning. By late this afternoon when I called her again, her question was the same.
“Have you sent me the article yet?”
Okay, now I do feel lame.
“Um, no, I was working all day, but I promise I’ll send it this week.”
Ugh. Note to self: put that at the top of this week’s to do list.
My dad says that if my Grandmother lives one more year, she will have outlived her own mother. I hope my Grandmother makes it, but regardless, I’m simply grateful she lived to see today.
I love Thanksgiving. You can’t beat the food, the festivities, catching up with old friends, but my favorite part is family. I think a lot of us take them for granted all year long, but it seems as if when the holidays come, we have a natural tendency to cling to them. It’s always fun for me to see how my little nieces and nephew are growing up. Kids seem to grow up so fast these days. My nieces, Rachel and Katy, text way more than I do, and there’s never a dull moment with my seven-year-old nephew, Christopher. He is the second Jordan boy of his generation. At his young age, I realize there is no way he could know the significance of it. When my great-grandfather, Dr. John Henry Jordan, died at the age of 42, he was survived by only one child, my grandfather, Edward (who was the second Jordan boy of his generation). John would never know how his legacy would continue, or if it would. It struck me as my sister-in-law, Michelle, recently showed me a photo she took of my little nephew sitting next to a family portrait of my great-grandfather, my great-grandmother, Mollie, and my grandfather. Ironically, my grandfather was about Christopher’s same age at the time the photo was taken. And as my sister-in-law points out, Christopher has the same expression on his face as my grandfather had on his when the portrait was taken about 100 years ago. How strange is that? It almost gives me goosebumps. My grandfather would have been so proud of Christopher. Of course, my dad is proud enough for the both of them. 
