When I was a little girl, my grandfather, who I was very close to, used to grow yellow roses. He had yellow roses growing all the way up his drive.
It feels as though it were just yesterday Grandfather exited my life like a bullet, leaving a bleeding hole behind.
My grandfather was from outside of Moscow, and my grandmother, although some of her family were French, was from Odessa. They met as immigrants in New York in the early '20s. My mother's family came over from Ireland generations ago.
My grandfather was hit over the head by a crane boom in Seattle. Some of the family claimed he was never a violent, crazy person before that. Some say he was. It depends who you believe.
At one point, when I was 20 and living in Kentucky, I got shot - it was a land dispute over six inches of property that ran a hundred yards through my grandfather's land. It was really over the honor of my family and that of another family.
That is one of the first things my family, my mother and my grandfather, had taught me about acting: 'Use your eyes!' Not being able to do that physical aspect of it, and having to put it all into your voice? That was a little bit of a challenge.
Until I was five, my immediate family lived near my grandfather's farm where my mother had grown up and, with the exception of a few modern conveniences, had not changed a lot over the years.
My grandfather was a newspaper publisher and his paper had all the comics in NYC, so some of my earliest memories are of reading the family paper and heading straight for the comics insert.
I keep lot of my opinions to myself. My grandfather, who was a gravedigger, told me one day, 'Son, the next time you go by the cemetery, remember that a third of the people are in there because they got into other people's business.'
I come from a family that has been here for almost 200 years. My ancestors started a very dangerous gunpowder business in 1802, and my great- grandfather and his father were both killed in gunpowder explosions.
My grandfather taught me generosity. He sold snow cones in Harlem. I went with him at 5 and he let me hand out the change and snow cones. I learned a lot in the couple of years that we did that.
I vividly remember the stories my grandfather told me about the carnage of the First World War, which people tend to forget was one of the worst massacres in human history.
It's in the history books, the Holocaust. It's just a phrase. And the truth is it happened yesterday. It happened to my mother. I never met my grandmothers or my grandfathers. They were all wiped up in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.
I put the copy of 'A Christmas Carol' that my grandfather had first read to me 60 years ago on my desk, and I began to write. The result, for better or for worse, is the 'Christmas Spirits.' I plan to read it to my grandson.
My family was very supportive of whatever I wanted because my grandfather was an opera singer. My dad's dad. So my dad has an appreciation for the arts, and he let me choose my own path.
I feel very blessed to have a partner in life who supports me, who is enthusiastic about what I want to do, who has been a great father, and who will be a fabulous grandfather.
The integration of a headgear in professional boxing would do so much to make it safer for young men. They could go into the sport, make a lot of money and then come out and be good grandfathers.
When my first child was born in 1962, I wrote a letter to my grandfather telling him how happy I was but how concerned; concerned because there were so many visions which were not very good.
From the time I was a small boy, I remember working in the fields with my grandfather and father. We weren't growing grapes, but we were farming crops, creating something good out of the earth.
I have a ranch in Montana, but it's not a real working ranch. I've always liked the outdoors. I come from Texas. My grandfather was a farmer; that's as close as I come.
My grandfather used to wear a black hat and coat. You are my children. You are my jewels. We old ones invest our future in you.
