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"   The last time I saw Gram, it was Mother&amp;#039;s Day. My grandmother was sitting in our old blue chair, a plate full of food in her lap, eyeing me up. &amp;quot;How tall are you?&amp;quot; she asked. Oh, no. Here we go again, I thought. For years, my grandmother seemed fascinated that I&amp;#039;d grown so tall compared to her \u2013 eight inches taller. So she&amp;#039;d try on my winter coat, which would drag behind her on the floor. And then she&amp;#039;d try on my shoes and wonder how the heck I can find footwear when my feet are &amp;quot;so darn big.&amp;quot; But then, Gram wasn&amp;#039;t the sweet grandmotherly type who&amp;#039;d worry if you didn&amp;#039;t have a hot meal, or who&amp;#039;d knit you a sweater to take away to college with you. Rather, she was the kind of woman who&amp;#039;d tell you what was wrong with your outfit \u2013 and perhaps, with you \u2013 with no apologies. Whenever I&amp;#039;d tell Gram that I had won something \u2013 say, for example, a soccer game \u2013 did she reply, &amp;quot;Oh, that&amp;#039;s nice, dear. Congratulations&amp;quot;? Nah. She&amp;#039;d nod her head and ask, &amp;quot;Didja cheat?&amp;quot; The answer didn&amp;#039;t seem to matter to her. It was as though she simply liked to remind her family that she was a six-year-old kid trapped in an old woman&amp;#039;s body. One afternoon a few years ago, she asked me if I&amp;#039;d lost weight. When I told her I&amp;#039;d shed five pounds, she asked me how much I weighed, as though this were something that women normally shared with each other. I answered her, and her mouth dropped open. &amp;quot;Good Lord!&amp;quot; she exclaimed. &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t look like you weigh that much.&amp;quot; Is that a compliment? I&amp;#039;m still not sure. And yet, Gram loved her grandchildren. If she didn&amp;#039;t, she wouldn&amp;#039;t have put a candy drawer in her kitchen at her house next door, and she would have locked her back door. She never seemed to mind that we&amp;#039;d invite ourselves over with a bunch of friends to fill our pockets with caramels and sneak into the &amp;quot;No-No Room,&amp;quot; her living room filled with breakable knick-knacks that we were allowed only to enter, escorted, on Christmas morning. (And yet, the great grandkids were all allowed in the &amp;quot;No-No Room.&amp;quot; But I&amp;#039;m not bitter.) The rest of Gram&amp;#039;s home, however, was our playhouse. Like the year when my brother, my cousin Pete and I found my cousin Susie&amp;#039;s Christmas presents hidden in one of Gram&amp;#039;s closets. She let us play with Susie&amp;#039;s toys for a few days. (Sorry, Sue.) Or the night Gram let me have my Sweet 16 birthday party in her basement. Or how she never complained about the numerous street hockey ball marks we left on her garage doors. As much as she kidded us, though, she protected us. When her teenage neighbor Billy filled my long hair with burrs, she waved her fist and shouted at him. Even I was scared of her that day, and I was taller than she was, even back then. At various family gatherings, Gram would have a rum and Coke or two and point out which jewelry she was wearing that she&amp;#039;d leave for my cousin and me. &amp;quot;And this bracelet is for you, Susie,&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;d say. &amp;quot;And this necklace is for you, Jen.&amp;quot; And wouldn&amp;#039;t you know, on the night she died just shy of her 95th birthday and shortly after Mother&amp;#039;s day, we found two sets of jewelry with hand-written notes that read, &amp;quot;This is for Susan&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;This is for Jennifer.&amp;quot; That note is even more precious to me than the necklace. Thanks, Gram. It was hard to say good-bye to the grandmother I grew up next door to, who was at my soccer games and my graduations. To the woman who&amp;#039;d sing &amp;quot;Red River Valley&amp;quot; \u2013 pretty much out of tune \u2013 if you handed her a microphone. To the person who couldn&amp;#039;t remember my cat&amp;#039;s name, so she made up her own. Perhaps Gram didn&amp;#039;t teach me so much how to be a lady, but she did show me how to be a woman. A strong woman who knew who she was and what she wanted. Gram was ahead of her time, and I&amp;#039;m fortunate to have shared so much of that time with her. The last time I saw Gram, it was Mother&amp;#039;s Day. &amp;quot;How tall are you?&amp;quot; she asked. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m eight inches taller than you, Gram,&amp;quot; I sighed. She popped an hors d&amp;#039;oevre in her mouth and quipped, &amp;quot;Seven-and-a-half.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a21965/happy-mothers-day-gram/>