86

My grandma celebrated her 86th birthday on May Day. I spent the day feeling very fortunate to have her in my life. 

With the exception of college (she went to the UO in the 1940s) and a few years when my grandfather was in the Navy, my grandma had lived in Bend all her life. She raised my mom there and managed the Chamber of Commerce for 20-odd years. There is still a building just off Wall Street with Magill Drug etched into the window glass, left over from the years her father owned a pharmacy there. Four years ago she left behind her friends, her church, and the familiar streets of her hometown to come to Eugene so she could be close to Rohanna and me. She now lives just around the corner. She gets to be here for family dinners, birthday celebrations and school plays. My boys visit her after school, and she held Lucy just hours after she was born. And for my sisters and me, she is a connection to our mom, the missing link in the four generations separating my daughter and my grandmother. 

Roh and Lucy and I took her to Marche for a birthday lunch. 

And Rohanna hosted a may pole party in her backyard. It rained, but that did not stop us from making a knotty mess of the ribbons.

And our friend Audrey helped her blow out her candles.