My gran turns 90 today. Yesterday I attended her birthday party. For a moment, and in patches, it was just like the family parties that we used to have when we were younger. My father’s family is a big bunch of boys all with the same quirky sense of humour. We don’t get together as often any more. My and my cousins have all grown up and have our own families. So the days of sitting with all the adults at the big table and all of the kids at the little table have passed.

My gran no longer lives in her suburban house with the shag carpet that always used to fascinate me. Behind the sliding glass doors in the lounge room there was a huge family tree painstakingly researched, with photos of our ancestors.

My gran had a huge collection of those little square melamine tourist plates about the size of an envelope. They had pictures of koalas and different Australian landmarks on them, and that is how Gran’s home-made lamingtons were served. Alongside the lamingtons, a glass of fizzy drink would be served in little metal picnic cups, each a different colour. Accustomed to drinking from plastic cups or glasses, the cool metal and the ‘pingy’ echo of the carbonation in the metal cups is still evocative. If ever I have occasion to drink fizzy drink from a metal cup, I am reminded of my gran’s house.

When I was younger, my gran threw “hens’ nights”. She would invite all of the female grandchildren around for a big sleepover during the school holidays. I was one of the youngest that would attend. The hens’ night sleepovers always concluded with a collection of skits performed by us kids for the amusement of gran.

When I visited gran, she would allow my sister and I to each choose a book from her library to take home and read and keep. It was in this way that I first read Alfred Hitchcock and Agatha Christie. My gran didn’t have paperbacks in her bookshelves. I still have some of those hardcover books complete with dust-jackets from my gran’s library.

My gran had every “Noddy” book, battered and torn through overuse from many grandchildren. When they edited Noddy to remove racially loaded references to the golliwogs, I heard that gran bought a whole new set of the books in their original form as they would no longer be available. I am not sure whether this is true, but it sounds like something she would do.

My gran is a lot older now. She, like my ten month old niece at Christmas, had to have someone “start off” the wrapping on her presents so that she could unwrap them.

Happy birthday Gran. May you have many more.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2003 at 11:56 am by dan and is filed under us. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.