Today would have been my paternal grandmother’s 100th birthday. She was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known, although she sadly slipped into dementia in her last years, the cracks in her sweetness showing the disappointments and bitterness she’d suppressed all her life. But for me, the memories of earlier on, when she was living in her small terrace house with the roses out front (with my distant grandfather until his strokes) in a retirement village in Germany, are much more vivid. Which is how it should be.

Thank you, Omi, for the smiles, the stories, the awesome tent beds in the attic, and the special treats in your fridge. But most of all for your love, which shines clearly in my mind, more than a decade later.