There are people that make a deep, vertical incision on the way you view the world after they pass through your life. They are often controversial figures, equal in the light and shadow they forecast: you fear them as much as you admire them. In due time you learn to value their virtues and forgive them their flaws, to see them, in the end, as human beings.

My grandmother was such a person. There are many days that I wish I could speak to her now that I know a little bit more about the sweet and bitter mix that is living a life. But I cannot.

In her final years I often recorded the conversations we had when I visited her. She told many tales. Here are just some of the ones she told more often.