Changing a diaper is a lot like getting a present from your grandmother - you're not sure what you've got but you're pretty sure you're not going to like it.
After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.
But certainly in my grandmother's time - and when I was growing up, yeah, Demetrie's bathroom was on the side of the house, it was a separate door. Still, to this day, I've never been in that room.
If I had a time machine I would go back 30 years and show up at my grandmother's apartment before the gargantuan meals she would serve and I would help her.
My first collection was made from sheets that my grandmother, who lived in Normandy, had been collecting for a long time. There are a lot of flea markets in that part of France, and she knew what I liked.
Mike Zavala: My Grandmother said, "If you can live without her, then man-up and cut her off. Don't string her along."
I grew up in a society with a very ancient and strong oral storytelling tradition. I was told stories, as a child, by my grandmother, and my father as well.
Ask any successful person, and most will tell you that they had a person who believed in them... a teacher, a friend, a parent, a guardian, a sister, a grandmother. It only takes one person, and it doesn't really matter who it is.
On 'Love Actually,' I met Hugh Grant, who is a relative: our great-grandmothers were sisters. He'd call me cousin and ruffle my hair. And it was brilliant working with David Tennant on 'Doctor Who.'
The first thing I learned was the 'St Louis Blues' when I was eight. Both my grandmothers, my mother and uncle played the piano. This was post-war Britain, and they played boogie woogie and blues, which was the underground music of the time.
I wish my mother had left me something about how she felt growing up. I wish my grandmother had done the same. I wanted my girls to know me.
My mother read nursery rhymes to me, and my grandmother told me folk stories, but as a child I had no interest in writing whatsoever.
My grandmother always came to my shows. She was always concerned about the way I dressed - even later on, when I was well known and I supported her.
My grandmother used to embarrass me more, when she would pick me up from school wearing a big fuzzy hat. I didn't like that.
Not so cold, some snow fell. I went inside the log cabin and said goodbye to Mother, she was so alike grandmother, just younger.
When you a ghetto star, when you a hood star, you gonna take care of your grandmother, your mother. When you on that next level, you gotta take care of the city, the streets.
My maternal grandmother made fantastic ox tongue with velvety roasted potatoes. She cooked sweet red cabbage and lovely cauliflower with butter and bread crumbs.
So I started to relax and would work on my act eight hours a day, sitting at a desk writing at my grandmother's house, and I would put on Richard Pryor Live on Long Beach and would play it like a loop and think and write.
For any of us in this room today, let's start out by admitting we're lucky. We don't live in the world our mothers lived in, our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited.
I learned from my grandmother, who grew up in devastating war times, how important it is to keep with tradition and celebrate the holidays during tough times.
What, the Great War? in which your great-grandfather, who happened to be my grandfather, was gassed in the trenches not once, but twice? Which meant he and your great-grandmother were very poor, because he was too ill to work and died young? And mean...