The Truth About Luck: What I Learned on My Road Trip with Grandma Read Online Free Page A

year, either. My maternal grandma, now in her nineties, was at an age when each birthday could (realistically) be her last.
    Mine is a small family. None of my aunts and uncles are married, or have children. Myself, Jimmy, and our sister, Jean, have no cousins. Grandma is our last grandparent left. She’s our only elderly relative. Her own family was large, with many siblings, aunts, and uncles. She was born in the northern tip of Scotland in the room above the corner store where her mother worked. Her family moved to Canada when she was two years old. They settled in Winnipeg. Her dad, a baker in Scotland, found work as a school custodian in Canada.
    Her parents, her siblings have all died, most of them before what we would now consider old age. I think one of her sisters died in childbirth. George, her husband of almost fifty years, died in his eighties. That was more than fifteen years ago. Grandma is the last of her generation.
    Growing up, we saw a lot of Grandma. It was impossible for her to visit the farm without edible treats, usually in the form of doughnuts. If the school bus dropped me off and I saw her car, my usual slow stroll up the lane became an energy-expending gallop. She knew each of our favourites, and there was always a vanilla-sprinkle waiting for me in the dozen.
    She would regularly host family dinner parties where Grandpa would make Campari-infused cocktails for the adults and Grandma would construct unrestrained spreads involving “nibblies,” appetizers, roasted meat, veggies, potatoes, salads, wines, and always a dessert. Even at lunch, Grandma always had a homemade sweet. Grandpa had a sweet tooth. So did Grandma. Her cookies were thin and crispy masterworks. Of all her scratch-made pies and tarts, I liked her lemon meringue, with its tall and curly peaks, the best.
    It was Grandma who would organize games before supper, most of which she had invented. One of her best concoctions was the aptly named “Funny Walks,” where each participant had to stroll across the room in such an unorthodox/unique/funny way as to make the others laugh. The more creative and absurd, the better. Grandma was the creator and Funny Walks master.
    Grandma was always delicately cheerful. She seemed to be laughing a lot but almost more to herself, never garishly, like she knew a deeper (and funnier) meaning to jokes and stories. I didn’t associate her with discipline or having a temper, but I was aware she was strict, and she would tell us if we’d stepped out of line. She was silly and sweet, but she was no pushover. She had a quiet toughness. Everything about her seemed steady and consistent, including that she was old.
    Oldness wasn’t a negative. It was just a verity I was aware of. I didn’t fear or resent it. Whatever my impression of old was, either you were old or you were young, and eldership included Grandma. It had to. She was my measuring stick for old. As I grew up, both physically and intellectually, moving from adolescent to teenager to adult, from student to professional, Grandma stayed old. We still saw each other, but less frequently. I left Ottawa for school and then work.
    I hadn’t been seeing much of her this past decade. Jimmy and I had been discussing her a lot. We’d get together and be talking about all the usual things, like sports, music, our work, or the 1970s BBC soap opera Upstairs, Downstairs , and before long we’d be passing our thoughts about Grandma back and forth like a cigarette. She was on the cusp of ninety-two. Ninety-two! Considering that cusp, she was in incredible shape, mentally and physically. Grandma was the LeBron James of old ladies born pre-Depression.
    She played golf in the summer, every Wednesday, with a group of seniors. She still actively followed professional hockey and cultural affairs and politics. She might be the only ninety-year-old in existence able to offer updated stats on the fourth-line centre for the Ottawa