Today we celebrated my momma’s 32,850th day. Don’t run to get the calculator, that simply equates to 90 years. Ninety years is quite a milestone these days and although she struggles to form words, is wheelchair bound and is slipping rapidly in her dependence to do even the most basic things you and I take for granted such as successfully get a fork full of decadently iced Corner Bakery cupcake from plate to mouth, today was a day to celebrate.

As I placed the sparkly tiara on her head and draped the “90 and fabulous” sash across her sweater, Kayla from the activities department put on the final touches of her freshly painted manicure. Upon entering the locked down unit, I wasn’t really sure if mom actually understood that today, the rare 400 year Twosday of 2-22-22, was the day that back in 1932 she had entered the world as the only child of my beloved grandparents.

Alzheimers has a way of striping away just about every memory ever made. Sometimes those stripped away memories are my own as the longer you see your parent losing bits and pieces of herself, the way you start to remember them becomes a little clouded by the adult diapers and drool you once thought only belonged on those to whom you gave birth.

Just a couple of years ago, we would have gathered family from around the east coast and taken her to a local restaurant where she would predictably order a crab cake and proceed to cover it with no less than half a bottle of mustard. The day she asked for lemon for her crab cake was the day we all shot questioning glances at each other that maybe mom’s memory was starting to go. But go where, at that moment we had no idea the trajectory we soon would be on.

Mom loved to go out to eat whenever we were in town and would get predictably tipsy off the one glass of cabernet, a treat that she saved for only when we took her out to dinner which inevitably would lead to her leaving the restaurant with her purse stuffed full of dinner rolls. The dinner conversation would cover everything from how she was sure a certain elderly, widowed gentleman in the church pew next to hers was antsy to date her to the current dismal standings of the Baltimore Orioles. I seem to recall one time, at a really nice restaurant, she stayed glued to Andy’s cell phone and the ESPN app because we wouldn’t chug our wine and swallow our crab cakes fast enough to get her back home to watch every inning of game #3998. Moments like these can seem both comical and annoying at the time.

But today, as my husband and I sat amongst her Sweet Memories memory care co-residents, suffering from varying degrees of “can’t remember”, sharing more sugar than any one person should eat in a month, it wasn’t lost on me just how precious time is. Every single second of every single day has the potential to be that moment when what has always been suddenly becomes how it used to be.

Today really was just a reminder that in this life you can celebrate even when you mourn. Actually, in this life it is absolutely imperative that you learn how to do exactly that. Because for anyone who has lived a decent amount of time on this planet, it quickly becomes apparent that life isn’t about holding our breath and waiting for things to get better once xy or z happens. Or when we get over this. Or when so and so finally does that. Life is a perpetual series of hurts and bumps in the road and awful, seemingly unsurvivable moments mixed in with beautiful occasions that threaten to take the very breath right out of you and milestones that make your heart beat so fast and hard with happiness that you think you’ll burst from being so dang lucky just to be on this ride. And the good mingles with the bad until life becomes one big blur of surviving and appreciating the bits and pieces of a journey that sometimes just makes you want to fall down and cry out of both angst and joy.

So in a world full of millionaires and billionaires and a national debt in the trillions—seriously, how many commas does it take to denote a trillion?—32,850 days seem awfully small. And yet 90 years can seem so incredibly long. Every single breath has been ordained by God as He numbers each hair on our head and the number of days that we will live—all this, well before any of us knew the comfort and safety of our own mother’s womb. Kinda makes you regret not making a huge deal beyond blowing out an increasingly annoying amount of candles on all the other not so monumental milestone birthdays. And those dinners out where mom eats more mustard in the restaurant than dinner rolls somehow doesn’t seem so annoying after all.

Because you know what? Recently, when I look into my momma’s blue-green eyes while she searches for a way to form words that just come out as forced gibberish, I can still see a glimmer of the person who once wrapped my birthday surprises in ribbons and bows—the mom who helped me plan elementary sleepovers and pizza parties to celebrate all those important childhood years of mine. It’s as if that woman, my mom, is locked inside somewhere behind the often distant gaze, and for just a moment, there’s a knowing sense between us, a dim but leftover twinkle in her eye, that she still knows. That she still remembers, albeit briefly, that in these long yet brief 90 years of living, that for 58 of them, I am still her daughter.