228: Ninety

Today is my grandma's 90th birthday.  She was born August 16, 1921, right here in Minnesota, a first-generation American whose parents came from Canton, China.  She and most of her siblings would later return to China, where she went to school, before returning to Minnesota to settle permanently.  Most of them still live here.

Grandma and three of her brothers outside their father's laundry in 1940s Minneapolis

In recent years, she's developed dementia, and there's not much left of the Grandma I lived with for over twenty years.  She struggles with mobility and doesn't remember some members of the extended family, and anyone who's had to help care for a family member with Alzheimer's or dementia knows how difficult things are for my mother, the primary caretaker.  Nevertheless, after a hospital stay over Christmas a few years ago, we're fortunate just to have Grandma still with us, celebrating her 90th birthday with her surviving siblings, her children, grandchildren, and her great-granddaughter.

2008.

Happy 90th, Grandma!