Grandmother Celeste

My dad's mom, Celeste, lives in TX and had a birthday today. (By convention -- due in large part to yours truly; I was a stickler for that sort of thing -- our family refers to her as Grandmother; our maternal grandmother Judy is known as Grandma.) The whole time I've known her she's lived in TX, but she has moved from city to city. 

She's very good at bridge, but I've never learned to play. She is also an avid puzzle solver, just like Dad. Especially crosswords in the newspaper, which she would cut out Jumbles (anagrams) from for me to solve. She and Dad have also had similar reading tastes: Mysteries (Sue Grafton and The Cat Who... series) and Tom Clancy. And history like David McCullough. She used to email me facts from history books she'd read or lists of facts in general since I was into that sort of thing.

She's very active. When we were little, she would wake up early to go to the gym first thing. (I used to be a late riser, so I tended to miss those trips.) When I did go, I remember doing aerobics with her like bikes and treadmills. 

Water exercises especially. When she didn't have a pool, there was usually one nearby. If I remember the tile correctly, this may have been her pool in Austin. When I was young I'm told I nearly drowned in that pool, but my brother Andrew saved me. I think I remember trying to swim over The Deep End (13 ft!) and getting side stitches and him diving in after me. It's always reminded me of the stories of heroism we'd read in the back of Boys' Life magazines and of the film It's a Wonderful Life. When we (cough cough I) got better at swimming we would compete at touching the pool floor.

There was a long, steep hill just outside of that house. Andrew and I had always talked about biking down it (it was already pretty fun riding it in a car!) and one time I had a bike and tried it. The bike went out of control but fortunately I only scraped my knee.

We visited her mostly in the summer. A lot of our travel was by car so we would wake up early in the morning and drive all day to get to her place, where we would stay for a week or so and then maybe head over to the beach (a shorter drive from there) for another week. 

One summer, Andrew and I stayed at her place. May have been around the time of Matthew's heart surgery. I think that's when we saw our first PG-13 movie, but I don't remember if it was Dr Doolittle with Eddie Murphy, Small Soldiers, or Armageddon. Seems like Dr Doolittle we saw with Grandma Judy.

She's always on the move, not just physically active. I think she's been involved in drafting, interior design, real estate, stocks, and something with an oil company where she met my grandfather Jim. 

She has a sweet tooth. The most classic example of this is that her fridge usually has packaged ice cream cones, but some other sweets I've seen at her place are praline/pistachio ice cream, pirouette cookies, and white chocolate pretzels. When Haley (whose name comes from Grandmother's) was little, she and Grandmother would joke about how they both had a "second stomach" especially for desserts.

She likes to travel. I have postcards from her from when she went to Europe. And we went on some of her trips with her. In my early teens she, Andrew, and I went on a road trip through Yellowstone Park and Mount Rushmore. Mom noticed that most of the pictures we took didn't have people in them, especially our Yellowstone gallery of mostly geysers, and attributed it to how we learned to read from Pathway readers, whose illustrations didn't have people in them either. 

She helped spruce up our bedrooms one time. Mine was a racecar theme and Andrew's was space, which turned out really neat because it had glow-in-the-dark stars on the wall! Space and sci-fi were topics many family members were very excited about, except for me and Mom (and maybe Haley), who also enjoyed it but not as much. 

One time she got us neon lamps. Andrew got a flamingo and I had a palm tree. Mine broke when we moved back from VA. I keep meaning to pick another one up when I see them while shopping, I liked that one so much. 

Grandmother also has a green thumb. In Austin (and maybe later) she had plastic frogs around the pool that would ribbit when something got too close to spook the deer from eating the plants. One time I visited her in Waco and she and her boyfriend Harvey were putting plants away when it was getting cold out.

I think the only alcoholic drinks I've ever had were at/around her place, although not always with her. In general I'm a teetotaler. When we were younger Mom would say that she and Dad had come from alcoholic families and that's why they didn't drink alcohol much. I abstain for that sort of reason. But one time after I chopped wood over there, and Harvey said something like "If you work like a man, you can drink like a man" so I had a celebratory beer.

Harvey's pretty cool too. Got me into Reuben sandwiches! And one time when we were out there he recommended a boating place that we all had a lot of fun at!

A while back Grandmother came down with cancer. It takes a lot out of her but thankfully she's still as upbeat and active as ever. This is from my last visit. Planning my next.