90 Years

To cap off the biggest weekend of the year, my family threw a party for my grandpa's 90th birthday. Now, I believe that this was a "for real" 90th. I've found that, for some reason or another, my ancestors were in the habit of submitting false dates of birth when they immigrated to this country. We celebrated my great-aunt's 90th birthday earlier this year, but we've calculated that she's actually closer to 100. Don't tell anyone.

The planning of this event took on the form of a "mini-wedding". There were arguments about the seating arrangements for 40+ invitees. There was a rather large cake, a game, and parting gifts. An aunt and uncle changed their plane tickets so they could fly back to Toronto from London two days early to make it to the party.

My father put together a scrapbook, featuring all the congratulatory certificates we received from the Governor-General, members of parliament (both federal and provincial), and the mayor. My dad found a photo of my great-grandfather that was taken in Cuba in the early 1900s. I KNOW there must be a good story connected with that. My grandpa met all kinds of interesting people when he was the manager of a prominent hotel in Hong Kong: General Maxwell Taylor, the royal family of Nepal, and who knows who else. There was an old photo of Grandpa with a group of men that my dad couldn't identify. When we showed it to him, he was able to name every single one of them. Memory is a funny thing.

I have a big family on one side, but we're not that close and we don't see each other that often. Every time we get together, in cases such as this, being in a room filled with four generations of my family brings a lot of things into perspective for me. It's like looking backwards and forwards at the same time. I'm often glad that I belong to a culture that holds family in such high regard. Sadly though, my grandpa is the only grandparent I have left, and most of my older relatives have passed on in recent years. I'm afraid that, sooner rather than later, all I'll have left are the photos. And my memory is fuzzy.

"It's times like these you learn to live again"