The strong grandma

Celebrating strength, stories, and an unconventional family history

Author’s note: This is the third installment in an ongoing series of personal stories exploring my family history and the legacy of my 2x great grandfather, Rudolph Johnson, a pioneer of early American naturism. Each piece in this series ties together the threads of my journey into naturism with the eccentric, inspiring lives of those who came before me.

With time and dedication, I hope these stories will form the foundation of a larger project, perhaps even a book. For now, they remain an intimate collection of true stories, shared exclusively with paid subscribers. More to come. Enjoy.

Lovina seemed genuinely bewildered that we’d gone to so much trouble for her. To her, it all felt like some kind of unnecessary extravagance, too much pomp for what she viewed as a meager accomplishment at best. We explained, of course, that one doesn’t turn ninety every day, but that’s just the way my grandmother is. She’s not one to make a fuss over herself—or anyone, really—and she certainly doesn’t expect anyone to make a fuss over her. Still, a small takeout lunch with a couple of family members and a store-bought cake could hardly be considered a “fuss.”

As modest as the celebration was, it felt important to me. I’ve wanted to celebrate Lovina and this milestone because I’ve always had a special fondness for her, even if I’ve never quite known how to express it. I’d thought about her ninetieth birthday for a couple of years now, imagining something bigger—inviting more people, planning an extravagant gift, maybe forcing her on a cross-country road trip to revisit her childhood home so she can again skinny dip in the frigid Deschutes River like she did in the summers of her youth; you know, something I could document with a couple 4K cameras and a basic mic kit, filming interviews along the way in an admittedly warped and obviously somewhat selfish pursuit to somehow put my family’s story into the form of a documentary film; the one I’ve long dreamt about but will probably never actually make because articulating the full story in all of its depth seems somehow too daunting a task to even wrap my head around––

Anyway, for obvious reasons, it had to be scaled back. Alas, something simpler felt more her style anyway.