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partying with a centenarian

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

My mum and I went out to see the Mastersons in Oakville for Xmas, today.

Among the crowd out there, one interesting party was the grandmother of the St. Catharines branch of the family. She was 100 years old.

I spoke with her about her marriages and her current situation (she's mostly blind, is quite hard of hearing, and can only just manage to walk with the help of someone to guide her, but she's looking for a man who can offer her companionship and who would preferrably have a car).

When she described her 100th birthday party, I asked her to recall her earliest birthday party. She said she couldn't, but then went into the tale of events that had happened on the day her brother was born. She and an older sister had wound up lost and alone in the plowed fields of the farm after sunset. There were wolves howling and frantic parents combing the fields for them, but they wound up okay. This happened when Irene was two and a half. Meaning that the story's events took place in 1905.