My Grandmother is a #Queen

#HBDGRAMMY!!!

My Grammy (or, "Ruth," as my older siblings call her because she was "too young to be a grandmother" when they were growing up) is the chicest woman I know. She is always in Chanel, perfectly accessorized with insane stacks of pearls and  diamonds. She is your quintessentially fabulous Jewish "Bubbe," but if you call her that, she'll kill you.

We are, more or less, identical twins. We look alike, act alike, and can fall asleep in absolutely any situation, no matter how inappropriate (my dad is like this too; it's made for some pretty awkward dinners with boring ex-boyfriends). She is a woman after my own heart. Or I'm a woman after her heart? Not sure how that works.

She just turned 89, and would beat me with her bedazzled walker if she knew I was advertising her age on the internet, but she looks damn good and the world — and all my potential suitors— needs to know that I have good genes and will age incredibly gracefully.

For her birthday, my entire family flew down to Florida to celebrate. She just moved into a new apartment around the corner from my parents' house, complete with hot pink walls and a reupholstered La-Z-Boy and was ecstatic to have the whole family together for the sole purpose of showering her with attention.  I wasn't kidding — we're exactly alike.

In addition to being fabulous, Grammy is also very fancy: her favorite food is lobster, and for as long as I've known her she's been exclusively drinking vodka martinis, extra dry, straight up with a twist. So, in her honor, that's exactly how we celebrated (minus the vodka — we opted for the equally fancy Whispering Angel instead.).

Because this was a big birthday, my mom hired a professional photographer to come to our house and document the event, so the first hour of the party was spent on the couch in various poses with different combinations and arrangements of family members. My mom always makes us wear head-to-toe white when she knows we'll have to take group photos (as someone who spends 10 months a year in Florida, she likes to show off her "natural glow") so my dad rebelled by wearing red pants. He did, however, accessorize with a needlepoint belt covered in lobsters, which was quite a departure from the Adidas track-suit he wore to his own birthday party.

The rest of the party consisted of me being unable to crack my lobster, drinking my mom's, my brother's, my grandmother's, and my own glasses of rosé, and spilling potato salad on my  (ok, my mom's) white dress. Grammy loved the outfit I picked out for her, and my brothers loved the fact that I put their names on the card. I actually missed my flight back to New York because I stayed for a second piece of birthday cake, but used the extra time in the airport to get better acquainted with my Hinge matches, so it all worked out for the best.

I only hope one day I can be as fabulous as my lobster eating, pearl-rocking grandmother, barring that at least some of my jewelry survives the next 65 years (based on how much of it I lost in the ocean this summer, I can't be too sure) and that I have a family who loves me as much as we all love her. HBD Grammy!