The highway is a grey ribbon woven through the patchwork quilt of golden fields, green hillsides and forests dappled in reds, oranges and yellows that covers the rolling countryside of Wisconsin. We left our ninety year old great grandma waving, as vigorously as her steadily numbing hands will allow her to, to a chorus of shouts from the children out the windows of the van.

It is my sincere hope that my ninetieth birthday finds me cheerfully welcoming a huge herd of great grandchildren and spry enough to cook a succession of turkey, ham, pot roast, spaghetti and countless other meals for them. I want, like her, to gamely walk the mile and a half round trip with chattering children to check on the status of the goose flock in a nearby pond and brave the grocery store just to buy ice cream for root beer floats to delight the seven year old who’s been lobbying for a “party.” I hope I bounce as readily when that same seven year old runs around a blind corner into me head long and knocks me down on the hip I broke ten years ago. (Yep, Ezra, you guessed it… after being told every ten minutes for three days straight to stay out from under Great Grandma’s feet. She hopped right up, brushed herself off and took an ibuprofen… no worse for the wear.) I hope I have developed the patience to play endless games of bingo and remember to save my laundry quarters for prizes.

Tony’s grandma is my heroine. She worked in a shoe factory during WW2, making insoles for the soldiers boots. She married after the war, raised two daughters in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, worked a series of food service jobs in the schools her girls attended and still volunteers more hours per week than many people half her age work for pay. She’s wonderful, and her family is her whole life. We arrived Sunday evening, all eight of us (Tony’s parents drove up with us) and were met by two sets of Aunts and Uncles to a grand total of 13 for dinner. She’d borrowed the community room of her apartment building and laid out a full Thanksgiving dinner complete with cranberry sauce, all by herself, and it was perfect. The food marathon was straight up hill from there, I’m quite sure we’ve all gained five pounds, except maybe Ezra, who as I pointed out above, ran most of his off in the hallways. She showed me a whole box of quilt squares she’s made to create lap quilts for the “old folks” in the nursing home. She wastes nothing and reuses all she can and washes her cans before recycling them. The so called “green movement” is decades behind our grandma.

I hope I can grow old as gracefully as grandma, who’s clothing always matches and who always has nicely done hair. Just this morning she was telling me about the benefits of a vinegar wash, something she just discovered for her hair. She inspires me to cultivate a quiet heart (something I fail desperately at most days) and to a life of service to others. She reminds me of the great virtue of a life lived in love and devotion to one man, his children and theirs. She is a living testimony to the rewards of perseverance, steadfastness, and diligence. I hope I’m the kind of great grandma who remembers to make jello for children who are sorely deprived of it by their own mother, and who bakes all of the cookies a week in advance with almonds, the only nut her granddaughter in law can eat, and who stocks the candy dish with two pounds of her grandson’s favorite fall candy, even though he’s 37 and his kids will eat most of it. I hope I’m still with the program enough to learn a new card game with my great grandsons and can muster enthusiasm for “Bionicles” or whatever new nonsense toys the kids bring and scatter across my floor like land mines. Grandma Parker is all of these things, and more. When I grow up, I hope I’m just like her… only I’ll be louder, no matter how hard I work on that quiet heart.