A Portrait in Grace

Walking briskly down the arrivals ramp in the airport, my mother Dorothy, moved with dignity and agility. She had not yet seen me waiting for her, but I had definitely spotted her confident stride. I smiled to myself and thought that she looked as though she took this flight weekly.
Everything she does, she does with a big heart and a smile. She still cleans her own windows at home, varnishes the doorsteps front and back, paints the bathroom-ceiling and all, plants her vegetable garden and exercises on her stationary bike. I always know by the sound of her voice when I call, that she has been up to something. Something in her instance, is life.
Life hasn't always been kind to my mother, but kindness is what she gives back to the world no matter what the past has painted. Her mother, Mary, was a hat designer with her own shop in Pennsylvania. In the early 1900's this was no small feat for a woman. She always had papers posted on the wall of her shop with inspirational sayings. I am forever trying to read all of them with a magnifying glass held closely over a photograph that I have. A treasure. That photograph gives me clues about the woman who raised my mother until she was 13.
My mother took her mother's sense of adventure with her. She practices it always. Before I can even get the invitation to do something or go somewhere out of my mouth, she is saying YES and her eyes light with excitement. The only thing that she takes seriously about age, is that she paces herself to be able to do all that she wants to do.

She is about to turn the corner on a new decade. 90! What's in a number? In her case, the only thing that comes to mind is grace.