Vignette

Yesterday, while watching my wife earn her white belt at Tae Kwon Do (a precursor to the more modern Rex Kwon Do), my phone buzzed. I had a notification on facebook, from Addie Coulter, so I had to stop to think a bit.

Addie Coulter is my grandmother. She was born in 1919, the year the 19th amendment to the US Constitution gave women the right to vote. When we spoke on the phone last year, she said, "I'm 93 years old, and I wake up every day without any pain." Grammie's mother - my great-grandmother - who I only ever knew as Mom McCrumb, lived to be 102 years old, and went bowling for her hundredth birthday. Our family seems to benefit from some form of the Lake Wobegon effect, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." At least the first part.

This post could go a lot of different directions:

a) the advances of technology and what they actually mean in terms of our day-to-day experiences
b) lessons from my grandmother (picking up pennies, opening doors, and authenticity)
c) how not to convince a Coulter woman to do something
d) an homage to my grandparents

...but it will go in none of those directions. My grandmother is using her iPad to connect to me on facebook while my wife breaks a wooden board in half with her bare hands and our kids play with other kids, switching effortlessly between hide-and-seek, make-me-laugh, and Angry Birds.

We live in an incredible, amazing, wonderful, confusing world.