We are lucky that—for the moment, at least—my grandmother is cheerful in the face of adversity. She is strong and fragile. She is stubborn and demanding and sweet and hilarious and sad and confused. She is a concentrated version of who she always has been, someone who changed my life and who inspired me and still inspires me. She goes missing sometimes, lost in her own mind, but when she comes back she is still the same strong woman who proudly wears the birthmark of a bird with a broken wing.
