Back in 2002, I wrote this about my grandmother Anita:

My 80-year-old grandmother makes me look like a slacker and a lazy bum. This is a woman who, living down near Gramercy Park, will regularly walk the hundred block round trip to the Guggenheim Museum. This is a woman who, late in life, returned to NYU not only for a college degree, but for a masters as well. This is a woman who, throughout her 60’s and 70’s, worked at a day facility caring for drug addicts and the mentally disturbed. This is a woman who, now, volunteers at the senior center assisting people ten, fifteen years younger than herself, with absolutely no sense that by all rights she should be the one in the chair being spooned jello rather than the other way around.

And, most recently, this is a woman who, having decided she missed out on her Jewish heritage by not having a bat mitzvah at the customary age of twelve, took it upon herself to learn Hebrew, and, some 68 years later, is holding the traditional ceremony this evening. I’ll be in the audience, wishing her well, and hoping that I inherited some of those genes.

In 2009, I had this update:

On Saturday afternoon, I got a call from my aunt, who was in midtown. By chance, she’d run into my grandmother.

At the time, my grandmother was midway through her afternoon walk. Nearly forty blocks from her apartment where she’d started. Less than five months after she’d been hospitalized and wheelchair-bound for a fractured pelvis.

And, on this, her 94th birthday, I’m thrilled to say she’s still at it. Still sharp, still living on her own in her apartment here in NYC.

I called her mid-morning to ask what she might want for a birthday lunch.

“French fries,” she told me.

Any specific restaurant she had in mind?

“Oh,” she said, pausing. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I was just imagining the french fries.”

We eventually decided on Petite Abeille, an easy jaunt from her apartment. And, indeed, she was pretty psyched about fries. As soon as we’d been seated, a waiter came over to ask if he could get us anything besides water while we looked at the menu.

“I’d love a coffee,” I replied.

“And I’ll take a side of french fries,” she added.

Normally, this is a woman who eats half an apple for lunch. But, today, she was in birthday mode, and socked away all of her order of fries, as well as half of the fries that came with my burger, as well as pretty a gigantic chicken club.

That was apparently more than enough, however; by the time the waiter offered a comped birthday dessert, she couldn’t even look at the menu.

Still, I was thrilled to celebrate with her, and lucky, as ever, to get her wisdom and perspective – after 94 years of living and learning and adventuring, she has amazing insight on so many aspects of life.

So, happiest birthday wishes, Grammy. I (and all of your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren) love you lots.