[Bookie]

That one's easy. I was brought up by my grandparents, victims (and survivors) of the Great Depression. They had been relatively affluent until the mid-1930s when the failure of the town's largest bank cost my grandfather his business. They liquidated their remaining assets and paid the outstanding debts over time, but things were never the same. By the time I came along, all the family had left were their pretensions, and they maintained appearances by unrelentiing thrift.

Clothes might be threadbare, but they were clean, starched and ironed. Shoes were resoled, given fresh heels and shined to a mirror gloss. My grandmother made slipcovers to conceal her fading upholstery and antimacassars to protect her slipcovers. Cloth napkins and table linens, darned perhaps, but there at every meal. Nothing could be wasted; little was thrown away. Grandfather saved string and kept a kitchen garden. Grandmother canned and put up preserves. The house was heated with coal, and until the Kennedy administration, grandmother cooked on a coal-burning kitchen range.They never owned a car, went to a movie, took a vacation, or had a checking account. Oranges were a holiday treat to be discovered in one's Christmas stocking, along with the nuts and hard candies that were never otherwise seen. I remember when grapes were still special and bananas were exotic.

If that sounds grim and deprived, it wasn't. There was love and warmth and laughter. It was the only world I knew and one in which I was both a participant and a contributor, hauling coal and taking out the ashes. Books were plentiful, and there was the magic of radio. I heard about the hard times when the bank failed and was grateful for the bounty we enjoyed. But I also learned how fragile was our prosperity, and how easily it could be snatched away.

Only years after did I appreciate how slender were the means and how miraculously far they were stretched. Only in retrospect could I see the quiet heroism that made do, did with, or did without. I marvel that in all the years I never once heard a complaint about the lack of money. I remember my grandmother's generosity to the less fortunate, her gifts of food and needlework. My grandparents had little, but we were never allowed to feel poor. There was always enough to share with those in need.

I have so much today. My world is filled with comforts and conveniences, diversions and options. I have so many choices my grandparents never knew. And yet, and yet. I wish I could have what they had -- that serene acceptance of circumstances, the conviction that challenges could be met, the ability to live life on life's terms. I wish I had their strength, their courage, their character. I wish I'd listened more, learned better, practiced harder. They taught me so much that I only now remember, not just about thrift but about life and the things that really matter in living.