My grandpa and grandma

Today we're talking about grandparents. If you assumed this was a picture of mine, I'm pretty sure you're new here. Or have been blissfully unexposed to my punim.

There's a chance that grandparents on my mother's side, the Scottish Presbyrterians, bore some resemblance to the folks pictured above. But given that they were dirt poor I think I'm safe in assuming the only boat they got close to was a fishing trawler.  And only then to buy oily mackerel that were snagged near a filthy Glasgow pier.

Grandparents on my father's side could not spell boat moccasin.  Nor have they ever stepped foot in one. They were shtetl people from Poland/Ukraine/Belarus/Russia. International borders meant very little to them. They just moved from town to town hoping to avoid Cossacks who might take their lunch money.

They were very much like the folks in Fiddler on the Roof.

Only, they lacked the photogenic good looks that would have earned them a place on center stage. Think of them as more as the overcoat-heavy villagers in the third row in the back, who would occasionally chime in with..."Tradition...Tradition."

Those were my grandparents.

I bring this up because the other night we were having dinner with friends at Sake House in Culver City. Our friend, let's just call her D., was recounting the story of her grandparents, who managed to survive the Holocaust.

We didn't get too deep into specifics. We didn't have to. Suffice to say that our grandparents, all of them,  were tougher than nails. And not those tiny sewing needle thin nails that I have occasionally hit clean through the drywall. I'm talking the big, thick torque-defiant nails that they drive into cement.

The problems they faced, poverty, discrimination, survival in New York City, dwarf, exponentially, the problems some of us face today.

They didn't take pictures of their food, family, friends or even themselves, they never owned a camera. If they did own a camera, they couldn't afford to buy film.

They never heard of a Vente soy latte capaccino, or whatever the fuck hipsters drink. They had Folgers coffee. And they used the grinds twice. Not because that shit was expensive, but because to them everything was expensive.

They didn't wake up, meditate, take a pilates class, burn some sage and stroll into work sometime between 10 and 11. They crawled out of bed, yelled at the upstairs neighbors for making so much noise, smoked half a pack of cigarettes, and girded themselves for a battle that followed them to their graves.

I like to think, minus the cigarette part, that some of that toughness was hereditary. In these difficult times I need it.