I flew down to Sarasota on Tuesday for a quick two-day g...

I flew down to Sarasota on Tuesday for a quick two-day get-away with my mom and sister. I just got back this afternoon. We stayed with our step-grandmother (my mom's husband's mother) and celebrated my step-grandfather's 90th birthday, the man who married my mother's mother after my mother's birth parents divorced--gosh--in the fifties. He adopted my mother officially a short time after that. His own mother escaped the Armenian genocide in the early part of the twentieth century. I have a vague memory of her: fantastic--and to my mind exotic--cooking, flowered house dresses in green and orange, rubies (she liked rubies) and a deep, warm, throaty laugh. I only knew one actual grandparent, I mean one with whom I shared blood. The rest have been a patchwork of blended families and others who have come into our lives through strange and miraculous circumstances--like the woman who helped around the house when my mother's mother was dying. After Shirley was gone, she stayed with us and became our connection to an older generation and a rich tradition of storytelling we as children never knew because our own grandparents had been snuffed out so early. Her name is Amanda. My step-grandmother's name is Rosa Lee. My step-grandfather's name is Ed.

Family is the greatest mystery.