My Favourite Sweater

GrandmaE
AndMeVille


My Grandma E knitted the sweater pictured above when I was still in Gradual School.

Which is a long time ago now.

In fact, yesterday, I was leading a seminar with a new batch of cell biology graduate students and we were discussing "differentiation-dependent changes in G-protein-coupled signal transduction" when one of the kids brought up a paper I wrote back when I was still one of them almost twenty years ago.

But, for the record, the sweater is older.

And I still wear it during at least one gigantor undergraduate lecture each year.

A no-longer-kid who left my lab a while back, and who is now on her way to work at that West Coast private school that plays Berkeley every year in the 'Big Game', really likes my sweater because, she says, "It seems like something Jughead would wear."

The no-longer-kid also, and only half jokingly, always asks if I'll give her the sweater.

I always say no.

And I am not joking.

But that doesn't mean that I'm not as proud of that no-longer-kid as my Grandma E. was of me.

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Just before she passed away, in 2001, Grandma E., who always liked to tell people, especially real doctors, that her Grandson was also a 'doctor', asked me if I was ever going to finish going to school.

At the time I'd already been holding down a 'real' academic job long enough that I also had tenure.

Which meant that I was a lifer.

So I smiled and told her no - I was going to go to school until I retired, maybe longer.

Not sure what she thought about that.

****

When Grandma E. died, our older daughter Bigger E. was eight.

Tonight, she asked me if she could wear the sweater to school tomorrow.

Tomorrow is Friday.

Jan 29th.

2010.

Which makes it Bigger E.'s 17th birthday.

Oh my.


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