"Two things reduce prejudice: education and laughter." Dr. Laurence J. Peter

All the talk swirling around Obama and McCain "playing the race card" brought back a memory of my first brush with racism in my own family. It was ugly. But in the end, inspiring too.

I had two living grandmothers growing up, one we loved, the other we loved to hate. Sad, I know. Yet through intolerance, bigotry, love and humor, they each, separately and together taught us a lot.

Grandma, my biological father's mother, was "the bitch," a sour, bitter woman without an iota of warmth, empathy or kindness. (This bit of info should add another piece to that puzzle I'm not yet ready to assemble publicly).

Grandma's family emigrated from Austria when she was a baby, so her English was accent-free. Once grown, the stunning daughter of a big shot Rabbi, she was a prime catch. When she married my Grandpa, she Americanized her name from Miriam to Mary, rarely went to synagogue, served pork at home. Clearly rebelling, but we never knew why.

After giving birth to a son (my father), she refused to let her husband touch her again. (Can you say, "psychosexual issues"?) In response, Grandpa left their house to "play pinochle" every night except Friday, when he went to synagogue alone. He died shortly after I was born.

Granny, my mother's mother, was "the cool one," youthful, charming, funny, warm, welcoming and loving. She was up-to-date and with-it, non-judgmental and interested in our lives, everything a Boomer could want in a grandmother.

Granny was born in America. So was our late, beloved PopPop. Extremely rare for Jews of that generation. Their families came from Palestine, several generations back, we think by way of Turkey or Persia.

Granny and PopPop were modern and hip. They met and married in the Roaring 20's, loved each other passionately for almost 50 years. She told us they had sex before marriage. Mon dieu! They outright adored our mother and us. Never missed a chance to show it.

When PopPop died I learned the meaning of the word 'bereft.' Empirically. Deep, deep down in my heart and soul. All of us, Granny, my mother, my sisters, grieved together almost as one. When a loved one is taken, sometimes you have to cry. A lot.

Granny soldiered on almost 5 years, living life as fully as possible, but I think waiting patiently until she could rejoin him. Her loss was monumental, they had redefined and refined the concept of "soul mates" into the fullest art of love. They showed us true commitment in action.

Grandma was a widow longer than a wife. She never regretted it. Liked being alone and untouched. When my father died suddenly at 47, though, she went crazy. We know now she'd always been clinically depressed, probably bipolar, taking to her bed for days with "sick headaches" then going on week-long cooking sprees.

It turns out she was in love in some sick way with her damaged son. And when he died by his own hand, she lost it. She even accused my mother of killing him. How twisted is that?

She had grandchildren to love. But no, not possible. Grandma was as mean and cruel to us as Granny was kind and loving.

Yin and Yang women. Lifestyles, attitudes, marriages. There are many stories about my grandmothers, singly and together. Here's a family classic, just a snippet of conversation. But, well, you'll see.

Grandma: "I never took my girdle off once during my honeymoon."

Granny: "You're full of shit, Mary. You got laid at least once or you wouldn't have had a child. And if that was it, you missed a lot."

A few quotes from each grandmother. We still laugh about them today. Especially Grandma's bizarre nuggets.

Grandma:
"Norman and Ira move their bowels twice a day." (A noble goal, I'm sure.)
"Polly and Connie never read comic books." (We got the best ones from them).
"You girls shouldn't be riding bikes, you should be sitting on the porch in white dresses reading about Einstein."

Granny:
"I love you to pieces!"
"Shit, piss and corruption."
"Can I try some of your pot?" (Honest to god. She used to smoke dope with us).

And then there's an unfunny, horrific vignette that sums up who our grandmothers really were deep down inside, and why we felt about them the way we did.

When I was in junior high my mother decided I should get a very short haircut. Some movie star had made it all the rage, I think Audrey Hepburn. I did not remotely resemble her ... if you need a clue, think Annette Funichello. (And if you don't know who she is, fageddaboutit).

Plus, I was, to put it kindly, chubby. Not a great combo with short hair. I loved my long, mane of thick, curly hair with its deep blue-black color that shines in the dark. Why my mother made me cut it off is still a mystery. Maybe she hoped I'd look enough like Audrey to stop eating so much.

    

Fat chance. So to speak. I emerged from the hairdresser with a halo of tight black frizz -- the first known Jewish Afro. I was mortified. Humiliated. Outraged. My mother told me "you look lovely, stop whining." Okay, maybe my beautiful, chic mother was right. Chin proudly up the next day, I went to school.

My "boyfriend" (i.e. an eighth grader I had a huge crush on who occasionally smiled at me in the cafeteria and had once kissed me during Spin the Bottle at a party) took one incredulous look at me coming down the school hallway in my new do, stepped into his locker and closed the door.

Have you ever seen a teenage girl's ego deflate, whither into dust and blow away on the wind of total rejection?

Forget broken heart, I spiraled immediately into Devastated Spirit. I ran all the way home--not a small feat for a chubbette like me--dehydrating, not from sweat, but from an amount of tears I didn't know it was possible to shed. Buckets, gallons, huge vats of tears. The kind that leave you gulping air, making those pathetic hhhunh, hhhunh, hhhunh noises like an asthmatic dog.

Granny was visiting, Oh Thank God, she would comfort me. But no, no, Nooooo! Grandma the bitch was there too! She circled me once, told me to turn around, glared at my mother and uttered the immortal words that still echo in our family lore, "She looks like a nigger-wop."

I was dumbstruck. Mouth literally agape. Personal pain forgotten. We didn't speak those words in our family. We didn't even think those words. In fact, that was probably the first time I'd ever heard them spoken aloud. My father and mother were both Liberal Democrats. Civil Rights advocates. Ever see the movie Dirty Dancing? That family was us. (Well, except that father was decent and kind).

We were expected to learn and be prepared to discuss politics and world events, literature, various ideologies. We had a White nanny and a White maid -- local farm girls, no "schvartzas" in our enlightened home. (What, I didn't say we were Communists!)

I had read the N-word in To Kill a Mockingbird when I was about seven and understood how degrading it was. I was smart, not a great attribute for a fat girl, but an excellent avenue for submersion in lives more interesting and less painful than mine.

I taught myself to read at age four when the one chapter a night our mother read to us from Little Women wouldn't do. I felt about the March family the way today's kids feel about Harry Potter. I'd rather be me in that regard. Life was easier if I juxtaposed the March family loving gestalt onto our home's pathetic, sick dynamic.

So back to Grandma and those horrible words, hanging out there, stinking up the room as three generations of women stood trembling in varying degrees of distress. "WHAT did you say??" my mother finally demanded in outrage. Not the best move.

"I said she looks like a nigger-wop," Grandma reiterated coldly to our shocked faces. All the time I'm thinking, I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.

Granny into the breach, with the reply of the century. "Well, I don't like those words, Mary, and I hope you wont ever say them again," she replied without missing a beat. She circled me too. "But now that you mention it, Sally does look like a combination of Lena Horne and Sophia Loren." (For today's generation, think Alicia Keys and Isabella Rossellini).

Bingo. Not the least bit true of course, but in one sleek move she delivered a smack to Grandma and a stroke to me.

That happened in the 60's. Granny died in the 70's, may she rest in peace. Grandma hung on until the 80's, out of it, in a nice nursing home (hey, she might have been a monster, but we're not).

Except for this: My younger sister, a lawyer, was the nursing home's official contact. They called her when Grandma finally died at age 97. Around 3 AM our phone rang. On the other end was my sister, singing, off key, "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead!"

When bigotry is finally silenced, sometimes you just have to laugh.