Increased Stature

Last week I went to have my check up. On the way back to the exam room, for my least favorite part, the weigh in, the nurse had me stop in the hall for the height measurement. There is no embarrassment about how tall you are or no Hippa requirement that heights remain secret so it is fine to measure me right in the high traffic area with lots of spectators. She told me to take off my shoes and put my heels against the wall. She pushed the slider bar down hard on my head, “5 foot 7 3/4 inches,” she announced loudly.
“What?” I asked in my middle-aged-could-I-be-hard-of-hearing already way. “I think you need to do it again. I’ve been seven and a half feet forever.”  
She lifted up the pusher bar and I stood back against the wall, and she tried again, pushing it even harder into my head so that my very thin hair did not give me any possible height advantage.
“No, I was right the first time, 5 foot 7 and 3/4’s.”
I have grown! Really does not seem right. I asked her to look at my 24 year old records, perhaps I had always been this tall and I was cheating myself.  
In what was good news for my memory and my height, I was right. I had been a quarter inch shorter forever. This new quarter inch is new.
I found this to be very encouraging because my parents are shrinking, as are most people their age. Today before we left the farm from an amazingly political free Thanksgiving I took a photo of Carter between her grandparents. They all look great, but my mother was disturbed about how short she was.  
Well, everyone seems short next to Carter so it should not have bothered her much. It just was a good thing Russ was not in the picture because then I might have had to have chosen between cutting his head off or my mother’s chin, given the differential in their sizes.
I am not sure how I obtained any gain in height at this late age. I am not hanging upside down or doing any Pilates stretching exercises. I felt my heels to see if I am in need of a pedicure to remove excessive heel calluses that might have raised me up just that little bit, but no, smooth as a baby’s bottom.  
Whatever the reason, I am going to take it. Soon enough I am sure to be going the other way. The one thing I am fairly certain of, I will always be taller than my mother and my daughter will always be taller than me. So much for looking up to your elders.