Is there someone in your life you owe everything to? It’s my grandma for me. She was always there to braid my hair in the morning, giving me advice and talking about the day ahead, and then she would walk me to and from my elementary school, which was about a mile each way. Having grown up on farmland during Japanese occupied Korea, she barely knew how to read, but she knew the name and season for every crop, and she could tell you a thing or two about weathering hard times. Apart from food and the most basic household supplies, she’d been known to go years without buying anything, because she gave a lot to her church community, which in turn gave lots back. She would bring vegetables from our garden, and home made cakes, and they would give her cash gifts and rides or haircuts. And she could work wonders out of rags, hand stitching old clothes into quilts that looked so shoddy to me back then, but make me cry when thinking about it now. My grandma taught me how to sew before I could even read, first by hand and then by our massive Singer that I still remember the mechanical smell of. But the skill to sew is what has carried me throughout my life in my career and as a mom now, making clothes for my 3 year old daughter Jane. I really do owe so much of my life’s achievements and joys to her. I can’t count how many things I’d tell her if my grandma and I ever met again - mostly thank you. In my mind now, I can see my grandmother sitting on her bed, slowly reading the Bible aloud in Korean, and I imagine what she would make of the state the world is in now. Maybe she’d say things were always uncertain, and to have faith in the bigger picture, some humility, and confidence of your abilities. Anyway, happy birthday, Grandma. I love you and miss you.