what are grandmother's for? We hug, we love, we bake cookies, and we mend things.
That's not exactly how I remember my grandmother. When my mother would go on one of her benders and we were forced to stay with granny, she fed us a disgusting concoction of stale bread crusts and milk and, she had an outside toilet without electricity, so we were forced to pee in a po after dark. The ignominy of it!
Oh dear. Definitely not a pleasant gramma memory! By the time I was born, only one of my four grandparents was still living. For most of my growing up years, she lived far away and I didn't see her often. I suppose I base my ideas of grandmotherhood on on how my own mother treated my children and their cousins.