Okay, so my mother is the daughter of a black man and a white woman. Her parents...my grandparents...committed a social sin when they married in the 1930s. "Pampie" was the third son of a tough, working class black family that had fled slavery in the South, migrated to New Brunswick, Canada, and then branched out to Bangor, Maine. "Nana" was the only child of Irish immigrants and had been semi-orphaned at age three when her mother died of complications from an ear infection that no one took seriously until it got so bad that the doctor had to perform emergency surgery. But by then it was too late, the infection had become a mastoid, and it burst during the operation, killing her before she'd even had a chance to recover from the anethesia. "Nana" was about the size of a bird, as thin as a strand of spaghetti (which she always mispronounced as "pus-getti"), and passionate about her religious beliefs. She was so passionate that she would swear at people who didn't believe as she did and tell them that they would burn in Hell if they didn't come to Jesus. "Pampie" was a prizefighter until he and Nana married, and after that he was an alcoholic millworker for about twenty years. Then Nana converted him and he became known for singing hynms outloud as he walked the three miles to work. He was a big, strong man who used to whip me with hisleather belt when I did "bad" things...like listen to rock music (aka the devil's music) on my transistor radio, watch "worldly" TV shows like "Laugh-IN", or try to sneak out of the house wearing mini-skirts and red platform shoes. Now.,..you may ask, why am I writing about my grandparents in my Fun Trivia blog if they were so mean to me. Well, to be honest, Gentle Reader, they weren't really mean to me, merely, I feel, misguided in their inability to accept my disinterest in fundamentalism. And, too, I am writing about Nana and Pampie because it's cold tonight, and snowing, and the world seems a crazy, inhospitable place right now. When they were alive, I lived with them, and during my teen-age years, we fought constantly. Oh, those bruises! Oh, oh, those screams and shouts and bitter rejoinders! But I miss them so very much. Because they really did love me. And because, when I was with them, the world was a simple place. It was truly black and white, both figuratively and literally. And their memory is one that I feel compelled to draw like a worn, slightly stained, frayed-edged quilt around my weary heart tonight.