If she were a flower, she would be a gardenia. If a piano concerto, Rachmaninoff’s 2^nd.

   Were she a bird, she would be among the rarest: an Indigo Bunting. If a soap, sandlewood. As a mother, she is one word: grace.

   On August 21, as the total eclipse cuts America on the bias, my grace-filled mother turns 105. Molly Chapman had to live more than a century to experience this astronomical magic. At the rate she is going she will make the next eclipse in 2024.

   But, "light" has been blocked many times during mom's life. She was born in 1912, the year the Titanic sank (We like to call her "The Unsinkable Molly.")

    She has witnessed the sun's emergence from other moonless nights. On a November day in 1918, in World War I's wake, six-year-old Molly watched the sun glint off the bayonets of returning American soldiers parading through her home town of Elyria, Ohio. 

   In 1920 mom recalls Miss Smythe lighting up the same town with her new electric auto. "Through the cars big glass windows you could see a daisy smiling from a built-in vase on the dashboard," she recalled.   

   One night in 1930 she descended dark steps to knock on the door of an actual Speakeasy. It was owned by gangster "Umbrella Mike" Boyle. She was an eighteen-year-old freshman at Northwestern University. Herbert Hoover was President.

   The Depression eclipsed 1930's America. But, her father's wealth lit a safe path for young Molly. Through those days she rode in a 16 cylinder Lincoln. Live-in maids cooked dinner & cleaned. 

   In 1943, during the Hitler-birthed nightmare of World War II, mom birthed me. "Nothing is more important than family," this ultimate caregiver says. Her sixty year marriage, four children, four grandchildren & nine great grandchildren suggest that. Her enduring love proves it.   

   It is age itself that mom has transcended. So many of us slice years off our lives by resisting change. The only things mom has resisted (graciously, of course) are poor grammar & coarse behavior.

   If there is a secret to her longevity other than genes it has been that supreme graciousness. Like the first tenet of the famous prayer, she has shown "the grace to accept things [she] cannot change."

   This beautiful trait has been a constant for Molly Chapman for 105 years. The photographs suggest it. Her life proves it. 

-Erie Chapman