For LBG, who wears Vagabond Picnic, and JWC, under Zeus's sky

You asked.

Hannah Daisy Shuldiner Land:
She was mother to four, grandmother to eleven.
She was not as tall as I thought.
She was a smoker, with the softest, most finely wrinkled cheeks.
She was once a model, once a neck-tie designer.
She stubbed her cigarettes out on a small golden Chinese tray, later to be auctioned at Christie's (it did not sell.)
She was a hobbyist painter, and devoted to the races (horses.)
She loved violets, and variations on her blue eyes.
She gave me a bottle of Youth Dew and a sapphire heart from Hong Kong.
She had a closet of crystal and a wall of mirrors and twin beds with mauve velvet upholstered headboards and a chair that still smelt of my grandfather's pipe.
She had a temper and a long mink coat.
She hated her name until she became Nana Hannah.
She had a mother named Blanche and a daughter named Blanche.

Postscript: She died seventeen years ago, today.