Whatever you're facing...
Heaven Can Begin Now

My mother's illness - and no doubt that groan at the demands of an energetic toddler! - continued for the remaining six months of her pregnancy. As for Daddy, he was coping with his own stress. While they were in Paris, a cable from faraway California had informed them of the sudden death of the mother he adored.

I wish I had known Daddy's mother! Her portrait hangs in our living room, a dignified white-haired woman with warm brown eyes behind rimless glasses. I often stop before it, wishing I could talk to her.

"Adored" is too mild a word for the way all seven of her children felt about Isabelle Campbell Schindler. "She was a saint," my non-religious father would say. Poor most of her life -- she was the one requesting liver "for the cat" -- Daddy remembered her as the most giving person he ever knew, forever bringing a hungry stranger home for a meal or a month of meals. Setting another plate on the table though her own might go empty. Making up another bed even if she had to sleep sitting in a chair.

A reformer, she frequented women's prisons, teaching sewing to the prostitutes who made up the bulk of the inmates. She conceived the idea, radical in turn-of-the-century America, that it was not wantonness that drove these women onto the streets, but hunger. If they were taught a saleable skill, she argued with wardens and police, they would not be forced, on the day they were released, to return to their old trade.