On her 82nd birthday, they whisper:

That Grandmother has seen better days,

for the greatest high is accompanied by the sharpest plummet.

That her brain isn’t what it used to be

and that before we know it, she’ll need to live in a home.

That she says the wrong thing, or pesters too much,

and it gets under our skin.

That she goes to bed too early

to dance away the night like a moonflower in blossom. 

That she wastes her time

as she arranges and plans every detail of her garden.

That there must be something different about her mind,

because she was never like the rest of us.

That she’s too stuck up in her ways,

a relic from a long gone generation.

So how come, at 82, I see someone who:

Remembers the calculus and statistics she taught for years

like it was yesterday?

Just wants everything to be perfect,

and toiled so we can live in luxury?

Woke up hours before the sun

to ferry her daughter everywhere her dreams took her?

Taught me the beauty of the natural world,

and the patience to wait seasons for a perfectly orchestrated bloom?

Above all else, just wants to be considerate

the only way she knows how?

Rejected decades of what her religion told her,

to choose to love me?