Reflection on Ninety Years

This past Friday was my dear Grandmother’s 90th birthday. We all came together as a family and met at a little family Italian Restaurant named Parillo’s. It was so fun to see her face when she came into the room, expecting to just be seated at a table and have a dinner with my Uncle, and see the roomful of her family from all over the country, there. Her life has been so rich, and she has blessed so many over the 90 years of her life. When I think of 90 years, I think of an entire lifetime of changes… Think about all of what we use every day.

DECADE: 1920-1930
Band-Aids, Insulin, The traffic signal, Birdseye frozen food, spiral-bound notebooks, electronic TV demonstrated, Penicillin; Schick’s electric shaver, the car radio invented. Gas prices were around 25 cents/gallon and a house was around $8,000.

DECADE: 1930-1940
Scotch tape, electron microscope, the Polaroid, zoom lens and light meter invented, stereo records, nylon; radar, beer is canned, Colt’s revolver patented, photocopier, ballpoint pen, Teflon, Sikorsky helicopter, the walkie talkie

DECADE: 1940-1950
The Jeep, aerosol spray cans, synthetic rubber, the Slinky, Silly Putty; the aqualung, synthetic cortisone, atomic bomb, microwave oven, the transistor, Velcro, the jukebox, prepared cake mixes, Alec and Mary were married. Alan Petrillo born.

DECADE: 1950-1960
first credit card, Super Glue, video tape recorder, the bar code, diet soda, transistor radio radial tires, McDonald’s, computer hard disk, integrated circuits, the Barbie Doll, Jim Petrillo born. 306 Caroline Street.

DECADE: 1960-1970
halogen lamp, valium, audio cassettes, permanent-press materials, soft contact lenses, electronic fuel injection, handheld calculator, the computer mouse, ATM machine, bar code scanners

DECADE: 1970-1980
the floppy disk, dot-matrix printer, VCR and LCD displays, first video game – Pong, gene splicing, disposable lighter, Post-it Notes, liposuction invented, laser printers, ink jet printing, MRI, the PC computer, the Walkman, roller blades, the Cray supercomputer, Lisa, Joshua, Matthew, and Sara born.

DECADE: 1980-1990
Apple Macintosh, CD-ROMs, Microsoft Windows, disposable
camera, disposable contact lenses, Doppler radar, genetically-engineered animal, HDTV

DECADE: 1990-2000
World-wide web, digital answering machine, the DVD, WebTV, Google,
mapping of human DNA, laptop computers, Ryan born.

DECADE: 2000-2013
iPod, iPhone, Hybrid Cars, Flatscreen TVs, BluRay, iPad and tablets, gas prices are around $3.50/gallon and the average house is $150,000. Kaylie, Joey, Rhea, Abrianna, Allesandra, Julianna, Rafaele born.

This is just gadgets and inventions… so many things happened in those years all over the world – several large wars, countries have been formed and reformed, presidents have come and gone. Life in America is quite a bit different than it was in 1923. But here we all are, together in 2013 celebrating the life of an extraordinary woman. Some call her mom, others call her Gram, others call her Nana. We all can agree that she is amazing and we love her. There are so many memories that I have over the past 40 years of my life with Gram. Our life revolved around going to Gram and Papa’s house or them coming to our house. Going to the city and spending the night, making pizza fritza, big family dinners around the table with Uncle Sal’s eyebrows and that strange meat wrapped with string that I could never quite understand, finding those plastic Easter eggs with money in them, doing puzzles in the dining room, straighten your shoulders!, conversations and letters that were always full of love, full of hope, and sound wisdom, trimming the hedge, red jello, how they left the state of NY to come to Indiana for my college graduation, watching them do the jitterbug at Lisa’s wedding, going to the auctions, seeing your strength as you cared for Papa, all the laughs and all the tears… coming home to NY and driving up the hill and entering those magic numbers that opened the door to love… Happy Birthday Gram!