This weekend we celebrated the ninetieth birthday of M’s Grandma. She is a wonderful woman who has seen and experienced a lot in her almost century of life. She lived through the depression, WWII, economic upturns and downturns, and the good and bad terms of nearly 20 presidents. She’s been a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, an aunt, a great-aunt, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother.
Her birthday party on Saturday night celebrated her role as all of these.
Family is so important to Grandma Allen, and on Saturday night, she celebrated with all the generations who love her. As we gathered around the tables of delicious food and beautiful faces, we told stories about how Grandma always made each of us feel like her favorite. We told stories about how Grandma’s family had changed and grown over the decades. We laughed about the good times; some cried as they missed family members who were already in heaven.
Grandma has certainly taught her daughters, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren the importance of family. M quietly lives out this value every day of his life, as do her other grandkids. That has been such a blessing to me and to my kids (I think all those married to a Allen grandchild would agree).
Because of M’s value of spending time with the family, he leads the six of us to be a unit, a team; we are all buddies. We love to laugh together, to chat together (A LOT!), to go on adventures together, and to tell stories to each other.
It’s that last one, the story-telling, that will ensure we never forget what happened this weekend at Grandma’s ninetieth birthday party. After the meal and the champagne toasts, and the carrot cake cupcakes, the family stood around and chatted. While M held Nate, and Sam stood by his side and looked up at him, they told stories to their cousins.
Until Nate suddenly leaned over and threw up the contents of what looked like four toddler bellies.
So. Much. Yuck….
all over Sam.
And the floor and the party, which quickly swept into action to clean up the mess.
M and I scrambled to get napkins and tend to our suddenly sick son and to sink-bathe our other son. Thanks to the flexibility and sense of humor of all involved, we were all able to leave the party a few minutes later clean and relatively unscathed.
As our family rode home that night, we told and retold (and retold) the story of Nate puking all over Sam. We laughed until our sides hurt. Tears ran down our cheeks…and then each of us retold the story again.
Then much later, after everyone was asleep, I lay in bed and pictured the scene again. I thought about how the Puke Story will get told again and again, for at least ninety more years. I thought about how blessed I was to marry a man who genuinely loved being with his family. A man who doesn’t mind (much) when he gets puked on, a man who doesn’t mind hearing the same yucky story from six different viewpoints about ninety times.
Just before I fell asleep, I thanked God that Grandma Allen’s value of family was absolutely thriving in the next generations…
…through the story-telling of puke at a party.
