Thought I'd put a little space in there--the thread was getting stuffy.

My mother's mother was born in the U.S. to Danish immigrant parents. She was educated as a concert pianist and taught master classes. Wasn't much of a housekeeper, according to Mom, who remembered my grandfather, a longshoreman (who was many inches taller than her mother), making much of the dust on top of tall furniture. She dismissed his criticism, but few others in the family managed to do so in later years (he was a brilliant man but a tyrant. He was a son of Norwegian immigrants). She died in 1927 when a car jumped the curb and killed her as she walked on the sidewalk in Seattle; Mom was five at the time. Mom's father lived into his 80s.

My father's mother lived into her late 80s, and had been a wife and mother for many years. They moved around the country, living in many states, because grandfather was a psychiatrist in the Army. He was also a tyrant, the master of passive aggressive (how suitable!) behavior and some say he drove her to drink. I'm not sure about the middle years of her life, when Grandfather lived in Northwestern Washington state and his mistress lived next door. He died in the late 1940s before I was born. Grandmother was back in Baltimore for many years, and worked as an office manager, I think for a doctor or an insurance office.

I never met any of them, and only saw my mother's father in his coffin. Neither of my parents got along with their surviving parent.

SRS