My Grandma and your Grandma were Sitting by the Fire

One of the stars of the evening, at least for me, during last week's get-to-know-you dinner hosted by the family of my brother's fiancee would have to be their 92 year old matriarch, A. When I arrived at the fiancee's Beacon Hill condominium she was sitting on the sofa enjoying (I believe) her cocktail of choice, an old-fashioned, and she just looked smashing. She clasped my hand and said "So you're the writer. Tell me all about it."

And tell her all about it I did. I spent most of my time before dinner chatting with her. Later, at dinner, this ancient woman held court on all sorts of obscure presidential golf trivia. She was seated in the corner of the room next to my brother just spouting off these random bits of information as if she were some sort of historian. She seemed to me at that moment to be the sort of person for whom the phrase "sharp as a tack" was invented.

In the car ride back to my apartment, there was a comment made on how our own matriarch, Babcia, might pale in comparison to A. And while it's true that the eldest member of our family would wear the same polyester pants every day if she could and prefers a gallon of chocolate milk with a jelly donut chaser to whiskey and tarte tatin, she cleans up quite nicely and brings her own brand of Polack glory with her wherever she goes.