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      INTRODUCTION

      MY GRANDMOTHER WAS FRENCH.

      She was French in a way that I will never be—no matter how hard I try. And believe me, I’ve tried.

      My maternal grandmother was strikingly beautiful. She was tall and slender and dark. She tanned easily and before her hair turned silver, it was jet black. She liked to wear it in sleek 1930s-style waves. My mother and I looked nothing like her. We were not tall. We were not slim. We were blondes with blue eyes, and with . . . well, plenty of curves.

      To my family, especially to my father’s Irish side, and indeed to our friends and neighbors, my grandmother was extremely exotic, even mesmerizing. She spoke with a slight accent, left over from a childhood where she and her brothers and sisters spoke only French at home and didn’t learn English until they began grammar school. My mother tried to be “French” in her own way. Occasionally, while I was growing up, she’d tell me fermez la bouche! (meaning “shut your mouth!”) and every now and then my mother would take a break from cooking frozen Swanson TV dinners and attempt a French béchamel sauce, with butter, flour, and milk. She would mix the ingredients in a saucepan, adding canned Bumble Bee tuna, and then she would serve this—smothered in a layer of black pepper—over toasted Wonder Bread. When my brother and I complained that it was too hot, she’d tell us, “I can’t help it! I’m French! I like spices—not like you cold Irish people!”

      I have no idea where she got the idea that the French like to overpepper their food. Or for that matter, that the Irish are “cold.” (Perhaps she was talking about my father, who was not cold, but kept quiet around her, for his own good.)

      My mother could be very theatrical. She was petite and girlish, but she could also be very provocative—kind of like a doll with a dirty mouth. She was used to getting a lot of attention and I think this made growing older all the more difficult for her. And when she found the power of her attractiveness waning in her forties and fifties, she became downright despondent.

      This was not the case for my grandmother, who was elegant and stylish and quite stunning well into her eighties. In fact, I have photographs that my grandfather took of my grandmother while they were in Florida during the winter months. In one black-and-white photograph, she is standing in a yard in front of some bird of paradise flowers, wearing a one-piece bathing suit. She stands with perfect posture, one leg turned in front of the other, so that she is looking out from a slight angle. Her hair is wet, slicked back, and there are a few damp curls creeping around her ears. She doesn’t look directly at the camera’s eye, but rather she is looking away into the not-too-far distance, as if she has better things to do than to be photographed in her bathing suit. Her wry smile says, Yes, I know you find me beautiful. I know I am tall and slender. I know you think I am a bathing beauty, but really, enough of this now! But, my grandfather, who was crazy in love with her, couldn’t help but take many such photographs. They had a very steamy marriage. That was obvious.

      My grandmother certainly knew the secret to joie de vivre. No, she didn’t tell wild jokes or risqué stories or tap dance around the kitchen (all of which my mother did), but rather, in her own quiet way, she found balance, joy, and l’art de vivre (the art of living). She gardened, she jarred fresh fruits and vegetables from my grandparents’ little farm and later from their own backyard. She composted and recycled long before it became fashionable. She fished and actually hunted with my grandfather. She sewed clothes for us. I’ll never forget how she took her old fur coat from the 1940s that was beyond repair and cut it up to make matching Jackie Kennedy-style hats and little fur collars for me, my mother, and for herself. She didn’t give us big, expensive gifts, but whatever she gave, you could be sure it was from the heart. She loved consignment shops and thrift stores. She loved the thrill of the hunt and the joy of finding something old and beautiful, but forgotten and discarded—something that she could rescue and rediscover.

      During her Sunday afternoon visits, she would often shampoo and curl my hair. This was, in part, my mother’s idea. My mother, who loved Shirley Temple and taught tap-dancing lessons, had introduced me to her old black-and-white movies—Curly Top, Baby Take a Bow, The Little Princess, Captain January, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. And she told me that I could look just like Shirley Temple if only we could get my hair done up into a bunch of those bouncy little ringlets.

      And so, my grandmother arrived and went straight to work. She gave me a shampoo in our upstairs bathroom, with me standing on a little step stool, my head bowed over the sink as she worked the fragrant bubbles through my hair and rinsed it gently. I loved the feeling of her fingers at the nape of my neck, and the warm water flowing over my head.

      Once my hair was towel dried and combed, I sat in a chair, while she twirled the damp pieces of my hair around small strips of cloth that