if god had intended us to follow recipes, He wouldn’t have given us grandmothers.

I thought grandmothers had to like you. It’s a law or something.

I felt that I did not really remember her except through the pain, and I longed for the nails that riveted her to my consciousness to be driven yet deeper.

What she showed me was, Yes, I am Grandmother as she is; there is no separation, really, between us. And that, on this planet, Grandmother Earth, there is no higher authority. That our inseparability is...

I still loved Granny. It flowed out of my chest. With Granny gone, where would my love go?

I was lucky to live in the 20th century, when gefilte fish could be purchased in a jar.

Granny always said finding justice was as tough as putting socks on a rooster.

Dear Abby has had her day, now it’s my turn!

This is a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven.

One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the children of Israel continue to suffer? My grandmother Dodo thought it was because the goyim were jealous....

When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.And so, laughing and crying, we said good-bye to my grandmother. And when we said goodbye to one grandmother,...

Saying you’re through with romance is like saying you’re done with living, Betty. Life is better with a little romance, you know.

And I can’t die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I’m a cracked plate.

My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the heck she is.

I know nothing about her. Just some books, and some stories she tried to tell me, and things I didn’t understand, and I remember big red soft hands and that smell. I never knew who...

[G]randma was always afraid of something. She set aside time each day for dread. And not nameless dread. She was quite specific about the various tragedies stalking her. She feared pneumonia, muggers, riptides, meteors, drunk...

Once your words fly out of your mouth, you sometimes can’t control whether they fly straight or crooked, Grandma Augustine says. “They can get bent in the strangest ways.” Grandma Augustine says that the only...