In first person… Outings with Grandma filled with love

Grandma Mollie never read to me (she didn't know how), never wrote me letters (she didn't know how), never drove me (didn't know how), and in fact never told me, "I love you."

These are the things my grandma did (circa 1945): She baked bread with me (her challah was a big partner to my small one alongside), and she walked with me to the park where I shook hands with her friends on the bench, wishing each a "Good Shabbos" and then played in the sandbox with all my guardians looking on. We'd go shopping down McAllister Street to the kosher butcher with sawdust on the floor and chickens squawking in their cages, and to the bakery packed with an excited mob pressing forward toward the glass cases, and to the vegetable stand, where when a lady said I really shouldn't take the string bean, Grandma told her that "this little girl's father is fighting for our country and if I wanted a stringbean I could take it." And then back again, up the steep streets, pulling on the back of Grandma's coat, "Giddy'up horsey, giddy'up," until we arrived home to the apartment with the window on the street, and the diamond shaped cookie with cinnamon and sugar, taken from the huge glass jar, was given to me by Grandma and her huge, huge love.