One of the Best Days in 90 Years

So ancient Mom turned 90 last week, and my sister and I wondered how to celebrate that milestone. Mom LOVES lobster. No --that's too weak a word. She SAVORS lobster. When we take her out for lobster, she sets about eating it in a way that's well, sexual.

She picks through each morsel, and slurps, and tastes. She really, really, enjoys lobster. So we figured we'd take her to a lobster restaurant, since she had told us she didn't want a big party.

My sister had a different idea. She'd host us at her place, and get the seafood herself. Boy, did she!

Yesterday, she, my brother in law, my California sister, Wifey, and D2 arrived for a true feast. Our hosts outdid themselves, with an afternoon of drinks, shrimp, clams, scallops, MORE shrimp, and then succulent lobster tails.

Each of Mom's 6 grandkids and 4 great grandkids either visited or called her this week to wish her a happy 90th. 2 of the families appeared on Skype yesterday. Mom couldn't grasp that they were appearing in real time. When my nephew Henry froze on the screen, Mom said "Oh, I guess it's a commercial."

D2 remarked to her sister "Grandma Sunny is nuts." She is, but in a very happy way --humorous malaprops, and a sense of her surroundings that's charmingly on about a 15 second delay.

Still, she has flashes of lucidity. She remembered one of her favorite jokes, from the long gone Borscht Belt comedian Totie Fields, who met a childless woman, and asked her "Well, what do you do for a nervous breakdown?"

So yesterday, we lounged, and ate, and laughed, and ate some more. We even broke out into spontaneous song, several times, and my brother in law and I were the only two drinking!

It was a truly auspicious day --a classy, fitting honor for our matriarch.

One the way home, Mom again said how delicious the chocolate cake was (in truth, it was a gourmet carrot cake). Then she said "Oh David --today was one of the best days of my life!"

I thought: wow --for a 90 year old, that's really saying something.