Yesterday my grandma would've turned eighty eight years old.  Unfortunately, she's been gone eleven years, so she'll stay seventy seven forever.

Patricia Batenic wasn't the snuggles and hugs kind of grandma.  She didn't get down on the floor and play Barbies with you.  She didn't pat you on the head and tell you how amazing you are.  She didn't smell of fresh baked cookies and chocolate cake.  My grandma was certainly neither soft nor gentle.

What Grandma was will be the one thing I will always miss.  She was honest and direct.  She told you exactly what she thought of you and your actions.  If she thought you were making a mistake, there was no hesitation in her assessment.  It may not have been what you wanted to hear, but it was nearly always right.  She didn't sugarcoat or soften the edges - and that's exactly what I needed.  She loved me fiercely, and I never doubted that.  Not when she was criticizing my clothes.  Not when she was pointing out the flaws in my character that were holding me back.  Not even when I got one of her patented verbal beatdowns.  Because I always knew she wouldn't say it if she didn't truly believe it would help me.

On more than one occasion, my grandma saved my life.  She saw the problems in my childhood, and she did everything she could to shield me from the worst.  I've heard stories of the person she was before I was born, but I didn't know that lady.  I don't recognize the flawed person she was before the date of my birth.  My grandmother walked on water, and I'm not afraid to shout that from the mountaintops.  She may not have been the milk & cookies grandma, but she was the kind of woman who openly offered her home to a nineteen year old girl with no other healthy options.  She didn't pull you onto her lap to snuggle, but she did take a lost and lonely kid to the mall for an hour of window shopping.  Not once in the twenty three years I had her, did she ever let me down.  I can say that about no other human being.

I lost Grandma when I was pregnant with Sofia.  So, my daughters will never know her.  They'll never enjoy the benefit of her wisdom or her honesty.  They won't be able to look back on her and think what I do... "That was one incredibly cool lady.".  I often wonder what she's thinking as she looks down at us now.  Would she approve of me as a mother?  Would she be disappointed in the decisions I've made in the last eleven years?  Would I have made different choices if she had been around to talk to me?  Would she have been different as a great-grandmother?

My childhood memories aren't the greatest.  But, sprinkled in there are the summers I spent next to her desk at UMKC-School of Law, alphabetizing and filing.  The afternoons at Mrs. Field's at the mall, sharing a small coke and a cookie.  The way she wouldn't ever let me have one of her Crunch Bars, but would share one with her cat every single night.  (Damn Chitty!)  I remember how, whenever I heard "Now, Sarah..."  I knew the conversation wasn't going to go the way I wanted it.  Most of all, I remember the woman who displayed more strength and loyalty than anyone I've ever known.

So, Happy Birthday Grandma!  I gave my girls a little extra dessert in your honor.  And, I was brutally honest with them more than once, just to pass on the tradition.