Still sending Valentines, birthday greetings and bottles of wine

My paternal grandparents are today celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary. Sixty-five, though!

This picture was taken of them on their 50th anniversary. I found it in an old photo album with a Post-it underneath, stating as such: Gram & Papa's 50th Wedding Anniversary. I don't know which is more astounding to me - that I have grandparents old enough to have been together for so long, or that I am old enough that a picture taken 15 years ago means I was in high school at the time and not, like, two.

Obviously I am very lucky to have two grandparents still alive and, for the most part, in good health. I actually had all four grandparents up until my senior year of college, when, on one spring day, my maternal grandmother suffered a heart attack. My grandfather, who had seemed to be in good health until then, quickly deteriorated and died just over two years later of what I considered to be a broken heart. I still feel lucky that I had more than 20 years with the both of them; sad that that my younger cousins got cheated out of memories that defined my childhood.

My paternal grandparents have four kids, eight grandkids and seven great-grandchildren. With the exception of my grandparents themselves, who spend half the year up at their house on Prince Edward Island, I am the only one that doesn't live in Massachusetts. Sometimes I feel like I was born into the wrong family, like, what's with the desire to live in a desert climate while the rest of them happily settle in for dark New England winters and vacations up north? I mean, it's raining in LA today and I haven't even left my house except to get coffee!

But, then, sometimes I'll catch a glimpse of myself and realize I fit right in.