A short tale to warm the heart

Yesterday we took my mother-in-law to Heathrow. She had been with us for the weekend on her way back from an extended visit to one of her daughters in Oregon, USA to her granny flat at her other daughter's home in Cape Town, South Africa.

She's quite the globetrotter, this white-haired lady of 80. With each of her three offspring living on a different continent, she has to be. Plus of course the fact that she is a Swedish ex-pat, requiring occasional trips back to visit relatives and touch base with her heritage. Watching her head off with her two eNORmous suitcases into Heathrow airport, supremely confident and totally at home with the business of international travel, I had to admire her.

A few times over the weekend, she had surprised me with her attitudes. She had asked my younger son (he of the long, curly locks) what he used to keep his hair in such fabulous condition. She compared stories with him about having their ears pierced. She had finally had her lobes done at the age of 70+. He recently had his ear cartilege pierced. She wondered if planned to wear a stud or a cuff. She discussed career choices with both the boys and encouraged the elder one in his consideration of forensic science, calling it a fascinating field. She chatted to him about his lovelife and his part-time job. She was unfazed by the online games that they play. Where she was not totally in touch with what goes on in the life of a teenager today, she asked.

As if that isn't enough, she told me as she left that she was going to miss reading my blog. Not this one, of course, but this one. She's quite a redoubtable lady and has long since taken to communicating via email using her children's computers. She really enjoyed the added dimension of blogging. Her daughter in America has subscribed to the RSS feed via Feedblitz and the two of them kept themselves up to date with the happenings in our lives. By contrast, her other daughter has a fear of the dangers of the web, lacking any kind of virus protection on her system. She has a dial-up connection, which she uses to dive in, send and receive new emails and scurry out again. She has opted not to sign up for the RSS feed.

So there you are. At 80, while she doesn't have a blog of her own, she has been an avid reader of mine, and would no doubt read others too, if family and friends chose to keep them. So much so, that she's going to miss it when she gets home. Score one for social media.

Go Granny!

Tags:

• Blogs
• senior
• citizens