I spent Saturday with my mother, sister, niece and aunt as we traveled to visit my great-aunt who lives in a care facility in Hannibal, Mo.--boyhood home of Mark Twain.  Four generations of women discussing the news of the day including the humor and heartache of family matters.

When I see my great-aunt, I think of my grandmother, her sister, who died ten years ago.  Grandma was a strong and complicated woman.  She had the best laugh ever--loud and infectious, sometimes resulting in a snort that embarrassed her.  She expressed scathing judgments especially against unfaithful husbands.  And she carried fears that occasionally erupted into anger triggered by sources, some more obvious than others, such as the thought of nuclear war and the metric system.  

She admired Jimmy Carter for being a “good Christian man” but firmly believed that a Christian couldn’t run the country.  She was best friends with Julie, the only African-American woman of her generation in our small town (Grandma was white), which impressed me as a child.  She had an openly conflictual relationship with my grandfather that made me cringe.  Yet she had a fierce love for her family including him.  Finally, she fought for her independence until the day she died, sometimes leaving casualties in her wake.

All this comes flooding back when I see our little band of women driving south on Highway 218 toward Hannibal and owing our existence to my grandmother, a complex woman who we will never fully understand.

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