From what little money my grandmother brought in each week she always saved a small amount. This was to provide for future tuition for secretarial school for my mother. My grandmother had decided that her son Gene would be on his own and her other daughter Mary would always need someone to take care of her; but for my mother she had a plan: that my mother would be a working woman who would have a good job that would enable her to take care of herself.
Year after year, however great the family's need, my grandmother Florence's savings for her daughter were never touched.
But when my mother graduated from high school and the time had come for her to apply to secretarial school she refused; she had decided that she wanted to become a nurse.


But my grandmother Florence Fey lived see her two able children prosper and her disabled child well-provided for. She saw her grandchildren born into freedom from want, into lives blossoming with opportunity.
I'll end by saying that growing up I never got to know my grandmother Florence well, my grandfather Nick even less, though they lived in Scranton and we lived 125 miles away in Philadelphia. Extended families sometimes have their own politics and social orders.
But through my mother I know something of their story.
Tomorrow's post will be a short story I wrote about 20 years ago based on a chapter in my grandmother's life.