My grandmother Nettie was born in 1915 and died in 1999, missing the millennium by 9 months, and Oliver’s birth by 18.

Sometime in the mid-1990s, my father equipped her with an older computer and set up on an email account for her — she was natalie@worldchat.com.

While she was an curious person (which is why she would abide the computer in the first place), she never quiet took to the medium, and so I don’t think we exchanged more than a few messages.

Looking through an old backup disk from the late 1990s, I found a copy of the last email she went me, and my reply:

Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 19:49:45 -0400 (AST)
From: Peter Rukavina 
To: Natalie Rukavina 
Subject: Re: Catherine's birthday

Catherine's birthday is June 18th.  She was born in 1963 and
so will be 34 in 1997.

-Peter

On Sat, 14 Dec 1996, Natalie Rukavina wrote:

> I don't the date of Catharine's birthday.
> Would you please let me know.
>
> Natalie

My favourite part of this exchange is that she signed her name Natalie, which is a name we never called her and, as far as I know, she never called herself.