Getting older.

My Granny is a pretty amazing lady. She was born with only one arm, and still managed to ride a bike/horse, drive, have children, change nappies, paint her nails, cook, and, well basically everything except knit or type. She was born in 1921, during the Civil War, and apparently some bullets came through the window above her cot one night. She finished school at 16, and worked as a telephone operator(how cool is that!!), because she couldn't type, which was the normal girls job of the time. She even had to give up her job by law when she got married. (marriage ban on working women, lasted until 1958, kinda strange to think about!)


















She has lived through so many things. To think when she was a girl there were still trams and horse traffic in the streets of Dublin, and nobody had fridges or TV. And now she still manages, in a world of technologies which no one from her parents generation could even conceive of. The changes that have happened during her lifetime boggle my mind.


O'Connell St, Dublin 1944





So today I took my granny shopping, because her only son was coming for dinner and as usual, she wanted everything to be just right. Of course, she does tend to drive us all mad here with her fussing, but none of us understands really what things are like for her (I didn't mention she is almost blind from macular degeneration). So anyway, we did the shopping and there were great debates over whether to buy cream crackers, and what kind of veg did he like best etc. etc. Im sure she was looking forward to him coming all week.

So she made the dinner on her own, (no mean feat for a nearly blind 86 year old one armed fairly deaf lady), and then she called me over to eat with them.

From the minute I came in, she seemed very crabby. I couldn't understand it........ But, I think it was that her son was not in the best of form himself. What I think it was, was that thing, where you really really look forward to something, and you plan it all down to the last detail, and you work your ass off to make it just so. And then, when it actually happens, its just not as great as you'd hoped. It just doesn't seem as perfect as you'd imagined. And the disappointment is so horrible, that you end up being completely snarky. I felt so bad for her, because I really do love my gran, she practically raised me, and I hate to see how difficult things have become for her.

So, yeah, getting older sucks.