die Oma aka Omi

This is a picture of my famous in these here parts mother-in-law. Everyone knows her, but I guess this is what happens when you stay put for 88 years. She's feisty, sometimes tempermental, but goes like the energizer bunny especially in weather suitable for gardening. She's a gardening fool and will wear herself out on her hands and knees all day in the sun. But she grows beautiful flowers and a lot of them, healthy bio vegetables, does a lot of complaining about it but also will tell you after she's rested that she loves the garden. It seems to be keeping her young.
This morning I was soaking in the tub and thinking about her and how much German I've learned from her. She's patient with my questions and is proud of the way she effectively can guess at my meaning when my German is not quite right. I am really kind of interested in the development of foreign languages, and as such sometimes we have had discussions about the most basic of problems in German....gender. Now coming from a world where things like table, sky, tree, etc. are all genderless, I have constant problems getting it right in German as do my friends (thankfully) since we all are learning this language a bit late in life. Omi really can't relate to this, and it blows her away when I ask things like why is a skirt masculine, why is a girl neutral, and why are spoons, forks and knives masculine, feminine, and neutral respectively. She looks at an object and it just IS the gender that it IS. Period. It does not matter if it makes no sense like if most of the rivers IN German are feminine but OUTSIDE Germany they are mostly masculine. In her mind THIS IS JUST CORRECT, and she cannot grasp why I don't see it this way. But she gets it slightly that my world is pretty neutral and she is nice about it when I get the gender wrong. It makes her chuckle, but I must say that NOTHING makes her laugh as hard as watching me knit. I knit via the American method....stick the needle in, wrap the yarn and finish your stitch. This almost knocks her to her knees. She has what I must admit is a much more effective method of holding the yarn so that it feeds through her fingers and she does each stitch in one swift motion. Since she's been knitting now for more than 60 years she's not only proficient at her method but knits at warp speed. I told her she can make a pair of socks in 10 minutes with 5 needles, no problem.
I could go on about her forever because I spend a lot of time with her every week. I'm her chauffeur for all things shopping and appointment related. I've really come to love her even though she's a kind of crazy little German devil woman!