My dad's mom died shortly before I was born, of some kind of stomache cancer, I think - I don't know for sure, because my father would never talk about her. Apparently she shamed the family by marrying a Protestant, and later divorcing him, and taking up with a man later on who never married her. My dad was raised mostly by his own Gran, a bitter Catholic woman with an ulcer who ran a boarding house in the small New England town of Fairhaven.

My mom's mom was the only child of an Irish woman who was herself the youngest of ten. Gram had seven children, and when her husband died under mysterious circumstances (apparently he was using an assumed name and getting mail at another address) she got a night job at the post office and worked nights at the post office for 30 years. She drove only Buicks, stashed away a good amount of money in her mattress over the years, and went on holiday as often as she could on Senior Citizens' Charter Trips sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. She often bragged about being held upside down by her ankles to kiss the Blarney stone. When she visited us in Germany, my parents accidentally got her drunk at a Beer Hall, and she mortified my father by dancing on the table. Every spring she drove her Buick down to the church to have it sprinkled with holy water and blessed by the priest. Before she left the house to drive any distance, she would sit at the little telephone table in the hall clutching her St. Anthony medal with her eyes closed and pray to make it home safely. She didn't wash her own hair, but went to the beauty parlor for a wash and set every other week. She wore a purple raincoat and a purple hat, and polyester pantsuits, and I always thought she looked like Mrs. Santa Claus.