In honor of my grandma <3

Anecdotes from my life with my granny

My grandma turned 90 years old last Friday. 90 YEARS! This is such a huge & special thing, so the plan was to celebrate it. The whole family came together to do exactly that.

This meant for me, that I travelled from Sweden to my hometown in Poland, called Pszczyna and my parents & sister came from Germany to all spend together as much family time as possible. My parents, sister & me stayed in the house that we lived in when I was born in Poland.

My granny is my mom’s mom and if I think about it, without her, none of us would exist right now. She is the last cornerstone of who made our family come to existence and this is mindblowing. When my granny was pregnant with my mom, it means we were kind of already there, we were the eggs sitting in my moms ovaries, ready to become me and my sister 25 years later.

Just to wrap my head around it again: the second my mom was a fully developed human being, floating around in my granny’s belly, she carried all the eggs she would ever develop in her life…so we were already present in my granny’s belly, through my mom… yes, yes, I know, we still needed the sperm to come & join the party, yet still: 50% of mee & my sister was there already inside my grandma, she carried us as well. And now she is 90! Wow…

The party was a full success, she managed to stay until almost 11pm, enjoying everything and everyone and looking just fabulous! She got several presents from us, her six grandkids & she loved the pictures and frames we made for her. I realized, the older we get, the more personal the presents, the better. Apart from what she needs health-wise, its memories and people that count the most & pictures are great proofs of our adventures of life!

So, for today I decided to share with you some drawings I did for her and with them, anecdotes that I remember from our time together.

Bus-travel-adventures from Germany to Poland

I was born in Poland, Pszczyna, that is where my parents grew up. When they decided to move to Germany when I was 1,5 years old, the rest of the family stayed in Poland. This meant many things for my parents and us in Germany, one of which were regular travels to Poland to visit everyone. We used to travel together in the car, but the older me and my sister got, the more often we travelled to Poland alone.

Back in the days… holy schmoly, that sound like I am super old :D… well, it was not very common to fly, bus travels were more accessible and common. Our parents let my sister and me travel to Poland alone in such a bus tour. When kids were travelling alone, the bus operators always had a “pilotka” with them, which was a lady who was assigned to take care of us & keep an eye on us. Whenever the bus stopped for a break for example, she would accompany us to the toilette. We also did not have phones back then, so it was great to have a personal assistant who made sure everything went well and I do think that my parents were able to call the busdrivers.

Me being the older sister, I felt that Yvette as the younger one needed extra protection and care, so I always sat at the isle. Like that, she was at the window and I would always notice whenever she wanted to leave her seat. These bus trips were so exciting and so much fun, cos we were looking forward to meeting our granny & auntie, cousins and neighbors & the whole family. Quite often our six weeks of summer vacations were spend at our grandmas place & we loved it every time!

Farm life in the middle of wheat fields

The special thing about those trips to Poland, apart from seeing our family, was the fact that our granny basically lived on a farm, or farm-like property. The house was surrounded by fields of wheat and she had all kinds of trees: apple, cherry, plums, pears, a huge walnut tree, then all kinds of berry bushes, raspberries, strawberries, black white & red currant bushes, veggies like carrots, tomatoes, salads etc…

And animals! All of them! Chicken, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, dogs, cats… it was a paradise for us to spend time there! We were outside all the time, got to see the changes of the seasons & the harvesting activities, took care of the animals… it was brilliant! And my granny showed us all these things, she taught us how to feed which animals when, what to do, what not to do. We ate her home-made compote of the fruits she grew and ate everything from the bushes and trees. Truly a magical place and magical memories we cherish till today!