Our Mothers' Mothers.
Mary (left) and Catharine at my parents wedding in 1958. My parents named me after my two grandmothers, Mary and Catharine. I have no memories of my paternal grandmother Mary, who died before I was 2 years old, but Catharine, my mother’s mother, was my beloved Grammy. For most of my childhood we lived a thousand miles from her, but she visited for weeks-long stretches during many summers and occasionally over Christmas. A few times we road-tripped from Chicago to Boston to see Grammy, my mom’s siblings and my cousins. Grammy loved to get mail. “Just write and tell me you went uptown and got a stick of gum,” she’d say. So I would and she’d write back, always slipping in a few dollars she probably couldn’t afford, the same way she did with birthday cards. Regrettably, I didn’t save the letters, but I recently came across one she’d written to my mom. Isn’t the national campaign crazy? Just now, I think that the best candidate for the Presidency is Robert ...