Characters: the Grandma

My husband gave me this wooden figure (I call her 'Knitting Grandma') for my birthday this year. She stands about seven inches high and I love the detail: her expressive face, her wire glasses and metal knitting needles, the folds and pattern on the apron, the tiny flower dots on her headscarf, the hunch of her shoulders, the flat black slipper shoes. She has taken on a life of her own in our kitchen, watching benevolently over her territory.

Someone recently pointed out to me that each of my books contains at least one benevolent older figure (not always a grandparent figure, sometimes an aunt or teacher or parent), and though I wasn't conscious of that prevalence, it seems fitting. I had many older, benevolent people in my life when I was young.

Did you?