I was raised in the church by my grandmother who made sure we went to Sunday School, read the Bible and went to church every Sunday. Every night we read Bible stories before we went to bed.
Some day I want to play a grandmother. And a foxy one at that!
My own grandmother went to great lengths to make sure I knew simple things like how and when to open the door for a lady. And the best thing my mama taught me was to pray.
The second thing that happened is, DNA analysis is much more sophisticated. All you have to do now is spit in a test tube and you find out all kind of things in six weeks - where they are from in Africa or Europe. You can prove or disprove the fundamental African-American myth that you descended from a Cherokee great, great grandmother.
My relationship with my grandmother has gone from strength to strength. As a shy, younger man it could be harder to talk about weighty matters. It was: 'This is my grandmother who is the Queen, and these are serious historical subjects. '
I'm not really into comfort books. There are too many of those as it is. Just sort of narcotic books, like my grandmother used to read. They have value like Paxil has value, but there's plenty of them in the world already. There's a shortage of confronting, stimulating, exciting books.
Today there are people trying take away rights that our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers fought for: our right to vote, our right to choose, affordable quality education, equal pay, access to health care. We the people can't let that happen.
You might be a redneck if your grandmother has ever been asked to leave a bingo game because of her language.
I grew up spending time at my grandmother's farm in Germany and she lived a few kilometers away from the border between east and west Germany. It was so strange that roads which used to connect two towns now ended in the middle.
My grandmother worked on a fruit and vegetable market stall.
It was dramatic to watch my grandmother decapitate a turkey with an ax the day before Thanksgiving. Nowadays the expense of hiring grandmothers for the ax work would probably qualify all turkeys so honored with gourmet status.
Posterity is the patriotic name for grandchildren.
As I do not live in an age when rustling black skirts billow about me, and I do not carry an ebony stick to strike the floor in sharp rebuke, as this is denied me, I rap out a sentence in my note book and feel better. If a grandmother wants to put her foot down, the only safe place to do it these days is in a note book.
My grandmother got her law degree from Syracuse University in roughly 1911 and later co-founded with her husband an investment banking firm on Wall Street known as Lebenthal & Co.
My grandmother's brain was dead, but her heart was still beating. It was the first time we ever had a democrat in the family.
I always remember having a healthy respect for my grandmother.
My paternal grandmother would not light a fire on the Sabbath and piled all Sunday's washing-up in a bucket, to be dealt with on Monday morning, because the Sabbath was a day of rest--a practice that made my paternal grandfather, the village atheist, as mad as fire. Nevertheless, he willed five quid to the minister, just to be on the safe side.
The great thing about the moon landing is that my grandmother got the first color TV in order to be able to see the moon landing that was in black and white.
There is a tradition in Southern cooking of recipes handed down for generations. And when I make my grandmother's strawberry pie I feel her right with me.
It's still the best game in town because you don't have to be big to play, and everybody plays. Even your grandmother probably played baseball.