Last week, in Providence, on the library book tour, I went looking for my grandmother’s house. Took me a day to find it, and as it happened, it was in view of the hotel room the whole time. Maria came with me.

My grandmother was perhaps the most important person in my early life. When I ran away from home, it was always to her house, and to a warm bed, cookies and pie, and lots of attention. When I was sick, I went to her house, and she would swath me in blankets and feed me hot soup until I boiled like a lobster and sweated out the germs. Saturday’s, she walked into downtown Providence with me to see Jerry Lewis movies, and other comedies, and although she spoke Yiddsh and didn’t speak 10 words of English, she would howl with laughter until she cried, breaking out the Hershey Kisses, dot-candy’s, Tootsie Rolls and licorice with much rustling and crinkling. She taught me how to laugh. And to love stories, even if you didn’t quite understand them.

Each week we walked across the State House Plaze into downtown Providence to see one comedy or another, and how sweet those walks were. Whenever she saw a police car, to the end of her life, she would push me into a doorway or behind a sign and put her body between me and the officers. I could never convince her that they were not looking to harm us and haul me away, not even when I was a middle-aged men and she pushed me into a neighbor’s doorway and tried to block me from the sight of a passing Providence Patrol Car. Other than the police, her great dread seemed to be that I might marry a gentile woman,and so it was with some trepidation that I finally found the three story tenement in North Providence – she lived on the top floor in four rooms for 60 years after coming from Russia – and broke the news to her about Maria.

“She doesn’t cook or clean much,” I said,” and I know that was important to you. But I am very happy and she is one of the best people in the world and I know you would love her if you knew her.”  She’s an artist, I explained, a creative person who makes lovely things. This was not something my grandmother could ever have understand. She was a creative woman in her own right but all of her energies were bottled up internally – family, cooking, cleaning, shopping. And often in the service of men. The idea of making something beautiful and selling it for the sake of her own creative expression was not in her consciousness.

But she understood love and connection, and she would have grasped that. And so I choked up a bit and got back into the car, because I knew one thing was true. All she ever wanted for me, really, was for me to be safe and happy. I can cook and clean for myself. And for Maria for that matter. (And she does a lot.)

I was sorry to leave. I miss my grandmother, whose name was Minnie. She loved me without any reservation and I trusted her without any. I was so glad to be able to find her house and say hello. And goodbye. I started to tell her about the farm and the donkeys and all, and I dropped it. The gentile was enough of a jolt for one visit.

“Goodbye, Grandma,” and thanks for loving me so much. They say it only takes one. And I think that is true.