Note: This was posted a week ago, but as coincidence would have it, is a prime candidate for today's Open Call.

      My grandmother immigrated from Toronto when she was six years old along with the rest of her family.  She married my grandfather, a US citizen who worked in an auto-plant, when she was twenty.  Grandma then went on to live a full life, outlasting her husband and two of her children, before finally dying at the ripe old age of ninety.  She was a tough lady, having survived the Depression with her wit and humor intact.  When asked about the Depression, she would say that for breakfast they ate potatoes and tomatoes, for lunch they ate tomatoes and potatoes, and for dinner they had a choice of either potatoes and tomatoes or tomatoes and potatoes.  Grandma always had a sharp remark for empty platitudes and hated being the object of people’s pity.   

          My sister, who studied genealogy in college, liked to interview my grandmother about our family history.  Sometimes Grandma was willing to collaborate, filling out the bare bones of our family tree with the details that make history come alive.  Other times she would get short-tempered, usually when my sister pointed out all the first-cousin marriages cluttering up our family tree.