My abuela Tita celebrated her 90th birthday last March. She stands about 4'10" in her little tacos. She swears she was 5'2" when she married my grandfather in 1950. (yeah right!) She is quite adorable with her little feet at the bottom of her little legs adorned with her knee highs half way up her calf. Attached to her little round torso are her little arms that end with tiny hands and stubby little fingers. At the top of her head is her dyed-red hair that frames her round little speckled face and an amazing smile around her perfect set of teeth. The only thing big about Tita is her personality. Being a twin and an Army wife may have worn any other woman into becoming mild but not my grandma! I wonder what she would have been like in a classroom because she was a spitfire as an adult! She's bossy, opinionated and hilarious - cracking jokes in Spanish and English when you least expect it...sometimes way naughtier than you'd imagine would come out of this tiny lady's mouth. Her laugh is accompanied by a slap on her knee. She lives to talk - to her grown children gathered in her kitchen, her grandchildren who are visiting, to her neighbors through the porton, to her siblings on the phone, to herself in her mind when no one is around I imagine. She always knows a better way than you, no matter who you are and she always has a story to back it up. For way longer than she should have, she sat on a thick pillow and drove her Toyota back and forth to visit her siblings who she loves so dearly. She loves to sit and watch the rainstorms from her porch. She was born in the mountains of Puerto Rico and shlepped her five children all around the United States and Europe at a time when travel was difficult and always managed to buy a plate from each place to adorn her walls and remind her travels. She loves cooking for her six grandchildren and countless nieces and nephews, making café with a sock, and sitting on the floor with her eight little "stinkers" of great-grandchildren. She probably has so many stories she's never going to tell... I wish I was closer to her now. I don't talk to her as much I should. She's thousands of miles away, maybe nearing the end of her journey but her big presence is ever felt.
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