Some of the most green people in our lives are our parents and grandparents, who always bought locally and carefully. I remember my grandmother would buy a jar of cream and make it last for a long time. To me, that is just as green as something with an expensive, eco-savvy label on it.
My grandmother valued even the smallest of things.
I’m a guy who was born in Cincinnati and whose entire family except for my mother still lives in Cincinnati – my grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, you name it.
My mother, twenty-two, was Harriet Gautier Brooks, named for her paternal grandmother, but always called Hallie. My father, twenty-six, was Albert Horton Foote, named for his father and great-grandfather, and I was named Albert Horton Foote, Jr.
You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She’s 97 today and we don’t know where the hell she is.
Becoming a grandmother is an extension of a woman’s personality. It doesn’t matter how many times you become one; the excitement is the same.
My grandmother raised her nine kids and raised my mom’s three.
How are we supposed to get old? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to get old? My kids tell me, ‘We want you to look like a grandmother.’ I agree with them. I want to look like a grandmother.
Losing my grandmother was one of the hardest things I ever had to go through.
My first taste memory is pickle. Even as a kid, I was really weird. I liked chillis. I used to climb up the shelves in my grandmother’s pantry. The pickle jar was kept right at the top. One time, I dropped the jar and it broke. I was totally busted.
I remember my grandmother taking me and my sisters to the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. We would watch the diving bell and see the diving horse jump into the pool. We would take the bus there, and I just smile thinking about all of us running around the pier on those days.
My grandmother and I followed my mother here, to a house a block north of Hollywood Boulevard but a million miles away from Hollywood, if you know what I mean. We would hang out behind the ropes and look at the movie stars arriving at the premieres.
My grandmother introduced me to B.B. King. She wasn’t someone who had a lot of posters, but there was a big poster of B.B. King on the wall as soon as you walked into her house in Meridian, Mississippi.
When I was 11, I went to Puerto Rico for a month to stay with my grandmother. To see the way people lived there and experience my own culture was wonderful.
I have trained my eye over and over ever since I was a kid. I was a bird watcher when I was a little boy. My grandmother gave me a bird book, and I got to like their colors.
My Southern heritage is a big part of who I am. I grew up around people who seemed like characters but are actual, real people. My grandmother made sure I had manners and all that stuff.
I used to listen to the soap operas with my grandmother.
I own a shameless number of ethnic necklaces acquired at local markets in developing countries or inherited from my grandmother. These have seen me through meetings in Davos and visits to refugee camps.
My grandmother is the person who inspires me the most.
Why don’t we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.
My grandmother used to call me Sweetie, and I really loved it.
My maternal grandmother had what might be described in a school report as a ‘lively imagination.’ She told us that she was a direct descendant of Sir Christopher Wren.
I started playing on my grandmother’s organ at a really young age. I learned ‘Chopsticks’ and that kind of thing, but I didn’t really start picking it up and start taking it super seriously until I was probably about 13, 14.
I was born in Earl K. Long Hospital. I was born Feb. 5th, 1986. I have a lot of family members. My grandmother had five girls, and all of them had children. It was always a house full. A lot of cousins. A lot of family members.
My relationship with my grandmother has gone from strength to strength. As a shy, younger man it could be harder to talk about weighty matters. It was: ‘This is my grandmother who is the Queen, and these are serious historical subjects.’
My mother was a businesswoman; my grandmother was a businesswoman – it never occurred to me that life might be harder because you’re a woman. It wasn’t until later and I had a bigger sense of the world that I realised that.
Growing up with country, R&B, gospel, and classical music from my grandmother and pop, Tuskegee was the perfect melting pot for my influences as a writer.
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.
I have been singing since the time I was two. My mom says I would sing Gujarati songs with my grandmother when I was a kid.
When it rains, nobody hides inside. You just go out and enjoy it. The other thing I remember is begging my grandmother for money to go and get a grapenut ice cream.
My grandmother has strongly influenced my approach to beauty. She has always cared for her skin by cleansing and washing her face with warm water in the morning. At all times, she has lipstick on and her face is immaculately powdered – she follows the same routine to this day and looks great at 94.
I’ve always heard the same doomsday concerns and yet, every day, there are people going to a classical concert for the first time – whether it’s on a date or being dragged there by their grandmother.
Both my parents worked. So it wasn’t like the previous generation where we learned how to cook and bake from our mothers and grandmothers.
I went to church with my grandmother every Sunday.
I had a grandmother who was really strong, who doted on me, who wanted to make sure that I didn’t go off the beaten path, although I did.
For a southern belle, my grandmother was remarkably modern. She threw my grandfather out, for one thing – some kind of argument about bourbon whiskey – shortly after the birth of their third child, and then went back to school to get herself a teaching certificate.
I wrote my first play as extra credit for my fourth grade English class. ‘Can Helen Stop Smoking’ was a satire on the ill effects of cigarette smoking. My friend Vicki Haugabrook played as Helen and I directed the show. At the time, my brother Vince was leading the campaign to get our grandmother to quit.
My father ran an insurance company, but he passed away when I was 8. My mother was an economist working for the government of Liberia. But both my grandmothers were entrepreneurs in rural West Africa.
My grandmother really wanted to see me become a singer, but she passed away before I became one.
My grandmother’s generation and generations before always saw beyond the horizons of their own lives and their own circumstances. They believed that opportunity created today would lead to prosperity tomorrow.
I remember watching Margaret Cho with my grandmother on TV. She was my hero, not only because she was funny, but because she showed me that it’s okay to be yourself, that it’s okay to be a brash yellow girl and to be a strong and brave woman.
My grandmother loved country music, and she’s the one who really got me into country music. She had George Strait tapes, a bunch of them. I remember listening to tapes, taking them out, the covers and the back.
Everybody I see, that’s the first thing they think of when they see me: ‘WHUUUUUT?’ or ‘YEEEAAAHHH!’ But they don’t realize that everybody and their grandmother says that to me.
Both my grandmother and mother used to wear the Red Roses cologne, and when I was 21 or 22, I smelled the same scent on a friend of mine.
My mother was a product of World War II. My grandfather was on leave in Edinburgh when he met my grandmother.
My grandmother, whom I adored, and who partly raised me, loved Liberace, and she watched Liberace every afternoon, and when she watched Liberace, she’d get dressed up and put on makeup because I think she thought if she could see Liberace, Liberace could see her.
When we were making ‘Toy Story,’ my grandmother was very ill, and she knew she was not going to make it. I went back to visit her, and there was a moment during that visit that I had to say goodbye, and I knew I’d never be seeing her again. I looked at her and knew that I was looking at her for the last time.
My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God – I thank God every time I think of it – I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.
I love a good breakfast – grits and eggs, French toast, turkey bacon. My grandmother on my father’s side used to make tea cakes, and her breakfasts were unbelievable. There was fresh ham, and she would go out to the yard to get fresh eggs. She lived in rural Louisiana, and we’d spend summers with her.
My grandmother and my mother and my grandfather, their style of praying was – all day long, they would pray by singing and humming.
My grandmother was whip smart as well as an incredible athlete. She played tennis in her sari, cheered on the Indian team in cricket matches, and tried to convince us that her made-up words were real so she could win a Scrabble game.
Coming from a single parent household, I witnessed firsthand the strength and courage of the single mother. I always had my father in my life but my household was run by my mother and my grandmother. As a result, I have always had the utmost respect for women and have chosen to strongly convey that in my music.
