My Grandmother is Maggie Smith

While we only have a few days left to wait until the premiere of Downton Abbey's Season 3, I feel the urgent need to tell you something: My Grandmother is Maggie Smith. She's Maggie Smith in The Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood (A movie I'm still surprised Maggie Smith was in, but moving on...) because, obviously, my grandmother has a Southern accent. 

She looks like her, (startlingly so, actually) she acts like her, and she's just as funny. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend some time with her in the hospital this week, and even though the Perry, Georgia Hospital is not my ideal scene setting for hanging with the GrandMary, it did allow for some of her most Maggie Smith-ness to flourish. She had quips and one-liners about the food, the annoying man who always came to do her breathing machine after she'd taken her ambien, who was common, her continued annoyance at people's incorrect use of grammar, and of course, how she missed the gossip of being amongst her friends. 

I will admit that my relationship with my Grandmother has never been quite the same since my Grandfather died. We used to have a kind of deep understanding, some kind of unspoken fun wavelength we were both on at the intersection of historic homes, love of novels, and UNO. There's so much I'm desperate to make her understand about my life, the way she used to so effortlessly when I was a little girl. But instead, we meet at a new intersection: Queen Elizabeth. She wanted to know all about the Jubilee. Which reminded me all the more of Maggie. And I was happy to tell her all about it. 

Even though I'll be missing my Grandmother, I'll be riding high from my time with her happy to have Maggie back on telly, reminding me of my fab family matriarch.