Q: Tell about what she meant to you as a grandmother.
A: To me, my grandmother was the most important person in my life. And I for a long time had no idea that she was famous. So as I reflect back and realize that at the time she was giving me a lot of personal time, she was a very busy woman. And I didn't really know it, because I was pretty naive. And she was so important as a grandmother partially because, for me anyway, my own parents were difficult to raise. They had a view of children that I didn't really fit into. I was a sickly child on a number of occasions. I was very shy. I was very withdrawn. My mother, like my great-grandmother, had hoped for a daughter that would be beautiful and very social, and I just wasn't those things. So my grandmother was the one that I turned to for love, for support. Not that my parents didn't love me. They did. But for additional love and support. And my grandmother was always there. I spent many nights in her house as opposed to my own, which was right next door. And I was particularly fortunate because I lived right next door to my grandmother my whole life. I grew up at Val-Kill. And then when I was in New York City, I was welcome in her apartment at any time I wanted to go. And I knew that, and I took advantage of it for sure. I was at her house frequently. And she took me on trips, and we had a lot of fun together, as well as I learned a tremendous amount on those trips from her. And she took time to teach me. It wasn't that I was learning by osmosis. She took the time to teach me a lot of things. And my parents at the time just were unable. They had, you know, four children, and my sister died, and that really kind of took quite a while for my parents to adjust to that loss. And so my grandmother became for me, you know, a tremendous mainstay.
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