How Great Are Great-Grandmas

My grandmother is now in a nursing home, after having suffered a stroke this past summer. She has good days and bad days. A couple of days ago, I received this card in the mail:

"You're three and you're special . . . "

I suppose this is a sign of her doing well and not so well. It is close to my birthday, and I am 3 plus something. Truly I love the card; I love the effort she made to think of me and to write to me. So because I love her, and I love that Geister and Boo have a great-grandma, I wanted to post about it. However, despite my efforts to write in a more essay-like manner, this post became a list post.

My grandma is a great great-grandma because:

• She remembers everyone’s birthday.


• She gave stuffed animals (dogs) to her great-grandchildren at Christmas.


• She treasures all the pictures she gets of the great-grandchildren.


• She called my daughter’s legs “doubles” when she first had her stroke, stroking Boo’s exposed legs and repeating “My, what doubles.” They were at the time, beautifully chubby doubles.


• She’s said that both my children have great names.


• She now calls the minister the “minister’s wife”, because the minister is a woman.
  

I know my children love their great-grandma because:

• When we left after the last visit to her, Geister said “Mommy that was fun. That was fun!” Granted, there were cars for him to play with, but I think his heart is blessed with the innocence of a three-year old. He thought it was fun to visit his great-grandmother in a nursing home.


• Boo likes to be held by her great-grandma, and play with her watch. Boo does not have eyes for age marks, wrinkly skin, or the discolouration of sickness.
  
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  Well, that’s about it, because now I'm stumped; what else can I say? Should I be making fun of my grandma in any way, even when there is obvious humour? But I won't make light of what she means to me, or how much my children (and all the great-grandchildren) mean to her. She’s a tie to my past, a vision of my future, and at present, someone who sends me very cool mail.
  
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  And also Yay Oma! I can’t forget her in a post about great-grandparents. She’s not so confused; in fact she’s in good health and she, also, loves to visit the great-grandchildren. I am the one who is sometimes left confused, as she has a tendency to throw in Dutch words with her English, without realizing she’s doing so. Hallo and Verwarring!