For Real, Can I Have Your Hand-Me-Downs?

I loved the recent article by Mireille Silcoff in The New York Times. It's about grandparents and about how our generation is one who knows its grandparents.  It's also about grandpa/ma style, which you know I love. (Oliver's legit impression of me: "My name is mom and I love old-fashioned things," he says in a pitch higher than usual.) Anyway, the article mostly made me feel lucky to have my Gram in my life and lucky to have known several of Jake's grandparents as well. I wonder if you might relate. Silcoff writes,

"Those in their 20s and 30s today have the experience of knowing and, usually, loving their grandparents for most or all of their adult lives. Today, college graduations, weddings, 30th birthday parties, Christenings, brises — these sorts of events are regularly blessed with multiple Grannies, Papas, Yiayias, Zaides, Nanas, Nonnas, Omas, Abuelitos. They stand up; they take bows. In the true fabric of experience, this is not some invisible stitching."

How lucky so many of us are! We lost my grandfather when I was 15 years old, but I am 34-years-old and my grandmother has been a part of the fabric of my entire life.  My lovely Gram—who taught me how to can tomatoes, make noodles, dote on babies, and say the rosary in times of trial.  I visited her a few weeks ago and watched her read books to my daughter, listen to me brag about my boys, and insist on feeding me lunch before I made the trip home.  I'm borrowing Silcoff's words here with my own story: Throughout my life, I have walked into this woman's home in diapers, with dolls, with En Vogue on my discman, with a fiancé, a husband, diapered babies of my own, and she has just always been there—and always with strawberry-blonde hair, red lipstick, and wrinkles. Like Silcoff says, standing near her, I am in the presence of a miracle of our age...