Wasn’t she a peach? Grandma in her early 20s.
As I mentioned in my last post, the reason for the influx of relatives was the occasion of my grandmother’s 100th birthday! As that is a pretty stunning milestone just about the whole clan came to T.O. to celebrate. So on June 10th—her official, if not actual, birthday (there’s some discrepancy)—we brought in a nice lunch at the senior’s home where she lives.

Sushi lunch on the senior’s residence patio.

Ever since her stroke Grandma’s memory for recent events or people is occasionally a bit foggy, but I’m glad to say that her appreciation for good food is undiminished (as is her manual dexterity with chopsticks). I don’t imagine she gets much in the way of Japanese food at her residence, and she ate satifyingly large helpings of sushi and teriyaki chicken. I had baked two cakes for dessert (a white chiffon with lemon-curd filling, and a chocolate bundt with a ganache glaze), and her eyes lit up when she saw the chocolate cake!

Chocolate cake!

Mom & Troy’s slideshow of photos of Grandma’s life went over very well (although—shhh—I think Grandma nodded off for a bit in the middle!) Then a photo session of the whole group in various permutations (“Just the kids!” “Now all the grandkids!”, etc.), and Grandma was pretty much wiped out for the day.

The whole clan (almost). Back row: Ann, Laura, Tamo, Peter, Troy, Reg, Michiko, David, Tamiko; Front row: Jon, Grandma, Midori, Setsuko.

And still looking good into her second century!

Second in our “try-to-catch-up” series of blogposts…

Much of June was spent in getting ready for my grandmother’s 100th birthday celebrations on June 10. The first bit of June involved deep-cleaning the house, to attempt to clear out space for the massive influx of relatives who were going to bunk at our place for a week. Happily, the week before the hordes descended was the annual neighbourhood street sale, so we cleared out a fair amount of old stuff. However, around the same time was a publisher’s massive book sale… Net gain: Two large boxes of books. Sigh.

So for one week in June our house was hit with a population explosion, doubling from three to six (my two sibs Tamiko and Troy, and my niece Midori), and for a short time bulging to seven (nephew Tamo). Photon went quite berserk with delight and confusion (since pretty much every room in the house featured a sleeping person or two at night), and I actually wondered whether this would work out or if we’d all be at each others’ throats by the end of the week (visions of rat overcrowding experiments dancing through my head).

Turns out we got along just fine, even if it seemed we were stepping over each other at times. It was fun having all the sibs together, since that so rarely happens; and the visitors spent a lot of time with us, just talking rather than tooling around the city, which was delightful! Jon coped well with all these people, and he especially took a shine to his cousin Midori, using his sweetest voice and beaming whenever he called her (“♫ Mi-DO-riii…♫”).

The ultimate clown-car episode at our place occurred when we had the senior relatives (mom and her sibs) over for dinner. Eleven of us somehow managed to squeeze around our patio table that normally seats six. Not so bad, but then it started to rain—not enough to be worth hauling all the dishes inside, but enough for the people not under the umbrella to get quite wet!

By the way, it is now over a month since that book sale, and there’s still a box of books on the living-room floor….

Next post: Grandma’s birthday

At times during the week we could’ve been featured in an Apple ad. Much of the week featured permutations of this view: Here, Troy’s working on the slideshow for Grandma’s party on the MacBook; I’m on my iPod touch; while Midori is somehow managing to use both iPads at the same time.