Grandma Madge would have been 99 today.

It's August 27 2017 and Gramma Madge would have been 99 today. 

I woke up to the voices of my grandma Ellie and grandpa Gerry singing her happy birthday from the 2 single beds in the back corner of the cottage.

Their voices were in unison, and they were really singing - not just saying the words like you do sometimes when you can't figure out what key people are trying to sing in. It happened so organically. I could hear them perfectly because there aren't really any full walls in our cottage at lumsden beach.  The ceilings are all open, which accounts for a certain lack of privacy, but also a certain intimacy and connection that only a small yellow cottage (with no real walls) can bring.

The 2 beds back there are small. There's about 50cm between them and they have matching wooden headboards - they're painted a light blue and they kinda bang against the walls when you sit down on the bed too hard. They've been there as far back as our pictures go.

The bed spreads (and sheets) on these two twin beds have always matched. I think they were usually hand made or purchased on bargain somewhere, or maybe someone got the matching set in a church sale. I think the current ones were quilted by a good friend of my auntie Jane but that might not be right. They're cute - yellow and blue designs always... to match the cottage.

Above each of the beds and above the blue wooden headboards, hang old fashioned lamps - the kinds that have a little key as the on and off switch. The glass decoration around the bulb is shaped kind of like a curvy vase and has an opaque whitish yellowish colour with some tiny spots and what seem like hand painted flowers. The brassy bases have almost lace like details around the bottoms and probably weren't ever designed to have energy saving LEDs in them, but here we are in 2017.

On the walls there are some cross stitch exercises with some roses with only one thorn kinda thing - but this morning I learned that gramma Madge had taught my grandma Ellie to cross stitch at some point and these are their prized canvases.

As grandma explained this to grandpa (laying 50 cm away in a matching floral twin bed) I found it amazing that instead of becoming sad or nostalgic about the whole birthday, cross stitch, storytelling thing, I could hear my grandparents talking and saying such positive things like "she must have had such good eyes to be able to teach me how to do that".

I think there are lessons here.

They've become so totally okay with the idea of death that it encourages me to be a little less emotional, or at least the sad kind.

It was the 2 of them and me and my mum in the cottage this morning, and when the birthday singing was going on, I had climbed into bed on the pull out couch with my mum. We were laying there both having to Pee really bad but not wanting to get up. I don't know if she noticed the tear roll down my cheek after "Happy birthday to you" ended.

When we got up, the cottage had a wam nostalgic energy. I sat next to grandma on the couch as she showed me some of the books she's written in over the years - things like weather and who had a boyfriend or girlfriend visit the cottage... she records so many things that might seem insignificant at the time; but later they have a strange weight and meaning. I bet we will cherish those cottage chronicles forever - we should probably digitize them sometime - remind me to do that.

But also remind me how writing is a big deal. I might not be the best story writer or journaling person, but.... how else do you have a benchmark of how you were feeling or what happened? I think an instagram account is only one version of this since half the time it's really just a highlight reel of what's great. BUT Today, there was really only great/so I won't feel bad about the highlight reel today.

I'm so lucky that for a decade living away in Vancouver, that I'm still able and excited to visit places like lumsden beach, to crawl into bed with my mom because I can, and to endure the weirdness that is our family cottage and the tiny village of lumsden beach. Weird or not it's a uniquely special thing that just doesn't need to be validated or shared or explained. It's okay for it to be exactly what it is. Because when you're singing happy birthday to someone who would be 99 today, I couldn't help but think of how thrilled she would be to see that the weird unique thing she was instrumental in building, is going forward into the future, 4 generations and counting ,with flying colours (or at least yellow and blue).