To be filed under "Good Things About Getting Old".

Last weekend, Brad and I drove out to Jersey to hang with the world's sprightliest 93 year-old woman, a.k.a. my grandmother.

It's only within the past few years that I've been able to really appreciate my grandmother for more than her grandmotherliness – the life she’s lived, the things she’s seen, and the stories she has to tell. The woman's been around since 1915; she’s got a lot to talk about. She describes a world that doesn’t exist anymore but for the memories of people who lived in it – an era the rest of us know through jumpy newsreel footage, yellowed newspaper clippings, and grainy photographs so old that their gloss finish has started to crack. And through the years, she’s told me about incredible things. Like coming to the US by boat as a child, struggling to keep her mouth shut at Ellis Island so that the immigration officers wouldn't know she had whooping cough.

Walking to the train tracks by her parents' farm, waving at the oncoming train to make it stop.

Applying to be a coat check girl at the Roseland Ballroom during the Great Depression.

Pointing out a hat she liked to my grandfather on their first date.

My grandparents were married for more than sixty years; when my grandfather died, Grammy moved into a senior citizens' community, which is where we met her for dinner on Saturday. It was the first time I'd been there, and I was expecting to be depressed. My brain seized on the experience of a long-ago visit to nursing home, and I imagined long hallways painted in shades of Institutional Green, the rhythmic thud of a walker against linoleum, stagnant air with a sour, medicinal smell. I shuddered at the idea of my grandmother’s fellow residents -- motionless, blanket-shrouded forms, huddled in wheelchairs under an endless bank of flickering fluorescent lights.

I realize now that this fear was based less on any experience of an actual place, and more on my having seen way too many horror movies that take place in hospitals.

Instead, we were guided through the building atrium, where three white-haired women sat laughing together by a sparkling Christmas tree, and into a dining room where every seat was occupied and the buzz of conversation was frequently punctuated by giggling from one of the tables. No desolation or depression here; more than anything, it felt like a college cafeteria -- but with tablecloths, waiters, and a clientele who actually dress for dinner rather than slouching through the food line in their pajamas.

A steady stream of elderly ladies (and the occasional, rarer old man) stopped by our table to say hello, be introduced, and chat with my grandmother, who was entertaining us by talking about the ever-rising hemlines of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

"Suddenly, some ladies were wearing their dresses cut above the knee, even though they were old enough to know better," she clucked, then added indignantly, "And if not, they were certainly fat enough to know better!"

And then, I had a realization.

I had always thought that my grandmother's moving away, leaving behind the place she'd called home for so many years, was an unfortunate but necessary choice. Now, it's the idea of her living out her final years alone, in that big, empty house, that seems impossibly sad. Here, she's social, popular -- hell, my grandmother is a bona fide Queen Bee. And somewhere between shaking hands with her friends ("I used to chat with him often," she whispered conspiratorially after one of these introductions, "but he's a died-in-the-wool Republican! I couldn't take it anymore!") and getting the tour of her cozy apartment -- where family photos and favorite paintings from the house where she lived with my grandfather cover every inch of wall space -- it became clear that she's happy here in a way she couldn't be somewhere else.

I just hope her fellow residents appreciate what they've got.

"Did you lock your door?" I asked, as she ushered us back into the hallway and toward the parking lot, where my aunt was waiting to take her home for a visit.
She turned back to check. "It should lock automatically," she said, then snorted when the door opened easily. "Well, except when I forget to push the button that makes it lock automatically!"

She pulled the door closed again, then shook her head. "Of course, it doesn't matter."
"It doesn't?"
"Not really," she said. "After all, we're too old to be raped!"