I Lived Like My 89-Year-Old Grandma For A Day And Am Forever Changed

She eats cereal every morning for breakfast, along with coffee and a glass of tomato juice. She usually reads the paper while she eats. So the start to her day is pretty ~typical~...besides maybe the tomato juice? IDK. One thing I do know is that I rarely ever eat breakfast — let alone set the table like she does. After she eats, she gets dressed and THEN puts on her lipstick. She says it's a waste to put on lipstick before breakfast because it comes off. Touché.

My grandma typically walks to church every morning. But on Thursdays, she drives to get her hair done — she's a better driver than most people half her age, trust me. And then her hair is done for AN ENTIRE WEEK. The hairdresser puts her hair up in rollers, lets her take a snooze under the dryer for about thirty minutes, and voilà! (She wraps it up in toilet paper and shower cap at night to keep it in place while she sleeps, but we will get to that later.) As for me? Well, as I said before, most days I'm in a rush, so I usually just let it air dry in the car and put it in a ponytail. My hair was too long to put in rollers and – let's be real – there's no way that style was going to hold my hair, so I had to skip this part.

A lot of my family lives near my grandma, so they stop in and see her often. On this day, my cousin Ben, who is my grandma’s youngest grandson, stopped by. I'm not exaggerating when I say he is a prodigy piano player. Like, he can play any song you name off the top of his head with no music. He volunteers his time to play piano for the elderly often, and my grandma goes along to watch. So we headed there to enjoy.

After we woke up feeling refreshed from our nap, we made a pie – as my grandma often does. Everyone says her pies are the best (hence why she teaches pie-making classes), so I was shocked to find out that the recipe she uses for her crust was one cut off of the back of a lard container. No secret recipe, no special grandma Gladys ingredients — just lard, flour, water, and salt! We decided to make apple pie, so we had to manually slice up the apples because she doesn't own one of those handy apple slicer things!

As I said before, my grandma gets random visitors all the time. So two of her great-granddaughters were dropped off (that's my son in the photo above) to hang out until dinner. I am a mother to one child and being around three kiddos made me realize I am really not ready for another one anytime soon!

My grandma did tell me that some days she does eat alone, but some days people also stop by for dinner — it just depends. On this night, three of her daughters (my aunts) stopped by to eat. And our pie was delicious I must say. When I eat at home we never usually have dessert, so this was a true treat!

Everyone has to do it, dishes after dinner. So we did that and then peeled some cans she had so she could recycle them. After she eats, she usually sits on her porch and enjoys the evening and people passing by. This part was really nice for me, because I feel like I am always running around or doing something in the evening. I never have time (or make the time) to stop and just slow down. This reminded me to do so.