March 16, 1929. My Grandmama was born 84 years ago today. I think about her all the time - when I am getting dressed and remembering how she took me to school every morning when I was growing up, when I'm getting a manicure and remembering how she used to ask me to file and paint her fingernails for her when I was home from boarding school on the weekends, when I try to make biscuits like hers but always fail, and mostly, when I look at pictures of all her great-grandbabies that have been born since she died and smile knowing how much she would have loved to spoil them as much as she spoiled my cousins and me.
I was very lucky growing up. My grandparents lived just across the street, and I probably spent as many nights at their house as I did my own. Grandmama would meet me at the road, and we'd walk back to her house together. She was a really great grandma; I'm sure lots of people think this, but I think she was the best grandma in the whole world. We would watch Wheel of Fortune, and play Scrabble (I have her to thank for my winning record in Words With Friends), and iron pillow cases (I don't know why), and shell peas, and can figs, and do a thousand other everyday things that always felt special because that's the kind of person she was. She taught me so much. How to sew a button, to season an iron skillet, to make cornbread. To celebrate every little thing that makes you smile, and to be kind to people, always.
I miss her every day, but I know she's with me. I hear her voice in my head on my happiest and saddest days. I try to be a person who would make her proud, and even though I don't think she would care one way or another about the "lawyer" part of my job, I know that she would be proud that I work hard to help children. Everyone who knew her knows that children were her heart - any children, all children. I am proud to have inherited that from her...and her iron skillet. Happy birthday, Grandmama. I love you.
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