of his schooling or his childhood, except that during the Great Depression, as a teenager, he rode with my grandfather in railroad boxcars out to California to be reunited with my grandmother, who found work as a housekeeper out there.

I know almost nothing of my grandfather Nathan. My mother described him as a kind, accommodating soul who went along with Hazel's zealous church work, even allowing her to bring their only son along on door-to-door crusades through nearby neighborhoods. My father described how embarrassed he was as a teenager at being yanked from one doorstep to another doing "God's work."

I met Hazel about the same time I met my father, and I could see the tension between them. She had no kind words for my mother, and the feeling was mutual. As bitter as he was toward my mother, I'm sure he reserved his deeper bitterness for the mother who doted on him. My mother always said that the root of my father's insecurity could be traced to Hazel, although I didn't fully understand this until I met her.

It was no great revelation or in-depth analysis of my grandmother's character that told me what I needed to know about her. The whole answer came down to something as mundane as a moustache.

When I entered my early 20s, I had grown a moustache like many other young men my age. A few days after I met Hazel, she remarked that I "ruined" myself by growing "that thing" on my upper lip.

"You look nothing like your baby pictures, and you were so adorable back then."

I looked over to my father, who also wore a moustache. He had heard this same remark many times before, and gave me a knowing return look. I remember my mother's remark decades earlier about Frank being a "mama's boy," spoiled, self-centered and resentful of being smothered. Then it all came together as I saw them, mother and son, fight and make up, again and again.

There are mothers who cannot abide their children growing into adulthood, shaping their own values and destinies, throwing off the yoke of genetics and nurture to find their own way in the world. I suppose there's little bit of this tendency in all parents. In Hazel it had gotten