Marking a Milestone

Today is my mother-in-law’s 100^th birthday.  Last weekend, her children and their spouses, her grandchildren and their spouses and significant others, and her great grandchildren gathered together from across the country and the world to toast her, joined by many of her extended family and friends.  She remains mentally sharp and as physically able as many much her junior.

Only within the last few months – past age 99 ½ 🙂 – did she move from the independent living section of the retirement facility in which she has resided for years to its assisted living section.  She indicated at the time: “I’m ready for a change.  I’ve been bored.”  She perseveres.  She always looks forward.  I would suggest that her attitude is even more important than her reasonably favorable physical genes as to why she continues on.

TLOML and I started going out as Marquette University freshmen.  She was then living at home at her family’s residence in a community adjoining Milwaukee.  After we had been dating a few months, when her mother heard that my birthday was coming up, her daughter told me that she declared:  “That boy has been spending all of his money on you.  We’re having him here for dinner for his birthday.’’ And she did – hosting my 19^th birthday party — an affair with china and crystal that I still remember clearly over a half century later.

If through providence one has the rare fortune to enter a family at such a young age and so happily, in time – in my case, well before we were actually married – one viscerally gains a second set of parents.  Such a blessing has been mine. 

May this extraordinary lady have many, many, many more happy returns.