Tomorrow is my grandfather's 97th Birthday!!!  I'm going up to his apartment to have dinner with him to celebrate the feat of a life well-lived. He is, after all, my favorite person on earth.  Which could have something to do with the fact that he gave me my very first handbag:  A leather, American-Indian pouch with feathers that hung from it.

He is a WWII vet, a carpenter by trade and the most unselfish person I have ever met.  When I was dating my husband I told him that he'd better like me because my relatives lived a long time.  (I had all four of my grandparents until I was 37.)

However, even I didn't expect our mutual fan club would go on for this long, and I am so grateful! My mother told me not to spend any money on his gift, but to write him another note.  He still reads last year's and makes all the nurses read it out loud because he's so proud of me.

I think those special letters that I've written to people who have made a difference in my life are going to be my legacy.  As my grandfather's is generosity. My grandmother's was being "The Cookie Lady."

The world gets so caught up in accomplishments when it thinks of legacy, but it's much simpler than that to me.  It's about who you are at your core.  What you left on this earth to make other people matter.  Most of us will never be Rockefellers or Carnegies, but that makes us no less important.  Not to the people we matter to.  We'll never be average in their minds.  Whose legacy made a difference in your life?