Grandparents Day is Sunday, September 13.
Most years, it gets remembered on the 12th at about 9pm, followed by a slightly panicked text to a sibling: Are we doing anything for Grandma tomorrow?!
This year, be the favorite grandkid. Or at least be the sibling who had it handled one day before everyone else!
I’d give just about anything to still be able to send flowers to mine. Both of my grandmas are gone now, but I’m really fortunate that I had enough years with both of them to actually know and remember them. And they could not have been more different.
My Grandma Brown was my person. She and my grandpa were farmers, and she was one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever known. She didn’t say a lot, but when she did, I listened. Between her and my mom—her daughter—I learned pretty early that you work hard, you do what you say you’re going to do, and you try to live right. She taught me how to cross-stitch and crochet, and every single time I came to visit, she would make me a Southern coconut pie because somewhere along the way she thought it was my favorite. It wasn’t but I never had the heart to tell her, so naturally I ate a lot of coconut pie.
She also loved pretty things, although she lived so frugally you might not have known it. And looking back now, I think some of my own obsession with making everyday things beautiful probably came from watching women like her find ways to appreciate beauty without needing very much.
Then there was my Grandma Stembel, my “city” grandma—which mostly meant she lived in town, something I found incredibly glamorous as a farm kid because you could WALK places. She would watch old Deanna Durbin and Shirley Temple movies with my sister and me, had the biggest smile and the softest skin I can still remember, and somehow put up the best Christmas tree I have ever seen. She also absolutely hated wearing a seatbelt and would argue with me (and everyone else) every time I made her buckle up—even when I was a teenager cramming her into my tiny Mazda Miata to take her grocery shopping. Apparently personal safety was where Grandma drew the line.
They were so different, and I loved them both for entirely different reasons. And now that they’re gone, it’s the small, ordinary things I find myself remembering most. The pie. The movies. The Christmas tree. Her hands teaching mine how to crochet. The completely unnecessary argument about a seatbelt.
Which is why, honestly, if anyone has earned the flowers, it’s this crowd. Grandparents spend years remembering our birthdays, showing up to things that were probably incredibly boring, feeding us, teaching us, telling us stories, and slipping little pieces of themselves into us that we don’t always realize we’re carrying until much later.
So if you’re lucky enough to still have yours, send the flowers while you can.
Order by 5pm PST and we’ll make sure everything arrives in time for tomorrow (a day ahead!), looking like it should—no panic, no 9pm sibling text, and no grocery store detour on the way to Sunday brunch. (Unless, of course, you’re picking up a Farmgirl bouquet at your local Albertsons family store. We fully support that detour.)
