Octogenarian

She was born in 1930, the sixth of thirteen children of a Protestant coal miner with one lung and his devout Catholic wife.

She arrived several months premature, before any neonatal intensive care units equipped for babies like her.

She fit in a shoe box and the doctor filled out her death certificate, but she had a lot of fight in her.


She ate ketchup sandwiches and she was often so hungry that she would spend her nickel for lunch on a candy bar on the way to school. Sometimes it was the only thing she ate all day.

She weighed ninety pounds when she married a very handsome, very good man.

She was pregnant when he shipped off to Korea with the Army, and she lived with his parents, who spoke no English.

She taught her baby girl to kiss her daddy's picture every night, so that he wouldn't be a stranger when he came home.

After he came home, she had seven more children, bringing the total to eight children in ten years.

Now she is a grandmother and great-grandmother many, many times over.

Francie, Fiver, Sally, Bun, and Mopsy are five of those great-grandchildren.

Her name is Marie, she is my grandmother, and she is eighty today.

Happy Birthday, Granny.