"We courted by horse and buggy, didn't see cars much back then," my grandfather told the gang of us who had come to help he and Nanny celebrate their 50th anniversary back in 1970.

"By the third trip, the horse knew the route and I had both my hands free."

We were all in stitches at the sly grin on Grandpa's face, that old scamp. Man oh man I wish you could have seen Nanny's face, though. She was shooting looks at Grandpa that would have made a lesser man think about joining the witness protection program right then and there.

"But I want you all to know, she was lily white when she married," he said, bringing down the house as he raised his glass to Nanny in a toast.

Ummm, you DID know that my grandmother's maiden name was Lillian White, right? (I think I got my love of puns from my grandfather, eh. Let's blame it on genetics, 'kay?)

Percy, my grandfather, was ummmm what they call a character. He liked women, good liquor, cards, women, nice cars ... did I mention women? My grandfather didn't have an eye for the ladies, heck he had TWO, count 'em TWO eyes that any woman could have for as long as she interested him, which wasn't usually too long from what I hear.

He went to WWI against his father's wishes, wouldn't use the exemption all farmer's sons were automatically given, and his father Alonzo never forgave him for that. Grandpa came back a war hero, but it didn't matter.

When Alonzo died in 1925 he left an estate worth over $125,000 at a time when $1,000 would buy you a 500 acre farm fully equipped with house, barns, and livestock. Percy didn't get one penny of that, his father froze him out of the will.

No worries. Grandpa always had a gift with people, very charming guy. When he became a travelling hardware salesman after he came home from the war, he did well for himself. Plus he got to meet all those farmer's daughters, eh. Bonus.

So one day he pulls into the White farm and after he's sold a bit of this, a bit of that, he throws a bit of the Percy charm at Lillian, tries to coax her into going out to a nearby dance with him that night. The charm slid off Nanny like eggs off a teflon pan.

Grandpa said at that moment he decided he had found The One.

They were married within a year, and things went extraordinarily well. Grandpa made enough to open his own hardware store. Then came the 1929 stock market crash. Grandpa had co-signed a loan for a friend who was starting a car dealership and when the economy went belly up, so did the dealership. It also bankrupted my grandfather, because the bank made him honour the loan he had co-signed.

Tough times. Grandpa went back on the road again, started at the bottom again as a travelling hardware salesman. But this was the Depression, no one had any cash. Tough times.

Flour back then came in 25 pound sacks made of printed cotton fabric and my Aunt Marj said Nanny made all their underwear by hand from this stuff, there wasn't money to go any other way. Things were patched, the patches patched, lots of hand-me-down clothes from the rest of Grandpa's family, the folks Alonzo hadn't cut off.

Bags were rare. When you bought something it was wrapped in paper and tied with string, and omigosh you didn't throw away that string because it could be knit into dish cloths. Even after the Depression lifted, my grandmother could never bear to throw away string. Some things mark you forever.

Grandpa started to drink in those days. He hit the kids, a lot. I heard from both my aunts that he and my dad would have terrific fights and that Grandpa would beat my father with the buckle side of his belt. It was no accident that my father ran off to WWII when he was still a boy.

Families are complicated things, don't you find?

Times change, people change. Things got better, the economy picked up, and when it did Grandpa stopped drinking, rebuilt his life completely. He made enough loot that he opened another hardware store and did well indeed.

When my dad came home from the war, they raised a flag of truce, but I don't believe anything was ever forgotten or totally forgiven on my father's side. It was no accident, I'm thinking, that my father put 600 miles between him and the rest of the family. But what do I know?

I only ever knew Grandpa as a kind, gentle old man who adored his grandchildren and spoiled them rotten. The rest of this stuff came out as I began exploring what had shaped my family, who were the folks that were part of the warp and weft of me.

Isn't it odd how little we know the people we love?

Grandpa was a pack a day man all his life so lung cancer took him out in his late 60's. Nanny lived on through her 80's, but Alzheimer's claimed her and gradually it peeled off her past year by year.

When she had to be put in a home, they only allowed her to bring in a few things to her room. So she brought a special armchair, her little TV and her plant.

It is one of the ugliest looking houseplants out there, big green strappy leaves, nothing special at all about it, except ... that when Nanny got married she got a piece of this plant from her mother as a gift. Nanny's mother, Letitia, had been given piece of this plant as a wedding gift from her mother Ann Eliza ... and Ann Eliza got the original plant in 1872 from her sister when she ran off and married a most unsuitably poor man.

Her marriage was so remarkably happy that this plant is considered a sort of marital good luck charm in my clan. Bits of it have been handed out for five generations now in the hopes that we will get a piece of Ann Eliza's happiness, too, in our marriages.

Nanny gave her daughters Marje and Gloria bits when they married, but my father didn't want anything to do with this ugly plant and wouldn't take any when he married my mother.

The odd thing was that as the Alzheimer's gradually stripped away Nanny's memories, she never forgot the significance of the plant. It had been part of her life since her childhood. Its migration from home to home, the lives of the women who had owned a bit of it, had been told to her over and over.

When Nanny died ... when Nanny died, my father, who I always considered the least sentimental of men, only took one memento. He took that ugly plant. It lived in his home during his third marriage, which was a remarkably happy marriage. When he was dying, he made a big point of telling me the plant's story.

A piece of it now sits in a pot in the window at the foot of my bed.

Listen, I'll take all the help I can get, eh.