Happy Birthday, G.G.!

I made my grandmother a silk shantung Bias Blossom pin from Cynthia Treen's Last Minute Fabric Gifts to celebrate her 90th birthday. "This is different," she told me when she opened the box. But she wore it all day just the same. And everywhere we went, I got to tell everyone that she was my grandmother and that today she was Ninety.

I made her a memory board instead of giving her a card. I was a little worried that she wouldn't like it, that she would think it was weird or different, but she was immensely pleased with it and became very concerned about finding a proper way to display it in her home. Taking a photograph of the whole thing did not seem right somehow, but I did snap a few snippets of it. Here are two:

This photograph has been a favorite of mine for nearly twenty years, possibly because I compiled the album G.G. is browsing through while she sits in the rocker in my parents' dining room. It's full of faded snapshots from the Seventies, and the colors of orange, brown and green seem to dominate. The person you can't see in the photo is my great-aunt, another extremely special person in my life, for whom my brand new niece was named.

This one was taken on a sunny but frigid winter day not long after my daughter was born, and it will always be a treasure to me. There are other photographs from that day of me playing joyfully with my child, and of my mother and my great-aunt holding her, but the series of G.G. talking with her namesake and becoming her great-grandmother is most meaningful to me.

So happy Nintieth, G.G.! You are strong and funny and sharp and capable, and you have always done well in this world. I am proud to be your granddaughter.