My grandma is definitely one of my most favorite people in the world.

Everywhere she goes she leaves such an impression on the people that she is never forgotten.

Her personality and humor are bigger than her petite 5’2 frame and she takes on the world with a lightness and love that makes her everyone’s grandma.

So I was so pleased to take her to her dream city: Paris. 

As an additional surprise before our wedding in Germany we took my lovely grandmother to Paris and London. It had been her dream to see the two cities.

My grandmother was born in a small town in the South to a teenage mother and father. She was given up for adoption to her grandmother who took her out West to raise her along with her children.

My grandmother grew up in a lower middle class in a household run by a black woman in the 1940’s. She became pregnant at 15 and had my mom.

She eventually had five children all of which she raised on her own. After working for years with the city and a temporary agency which refused to promote her because she was a black woman in the 1950’s and 60’s — she went out on her own and started a cleaning business. She was able to buy a house, raise 5 kids, and maintain a decent lifestyle with the back breaking work of cleaning homes throughout the Bay Area. She worked until she got cancer in her late 60’s which forced her into an early retirement. Like everything else in her life, she successfully beat it into remission.

She’s one feisty and strong lady.

So it was our pleasure to take her on a trip to her city of dreams. Her first trip overseas that required a passport.

We wanted to share the little very low budget film I made for her as a keepsake for her trip. We made the video by taking a rapid series of photos and stringing them together with iMovie. One day I’ll graduate from iMovie.