Years of unbroken silence between Mamie and his Mother lay beneath the awkwardness inherent in this late afternoon meeting. But the barriers to his dream of reuniting his family and the actual meeting of his volatile Mother and his reserved Grandmother were not insurmountable, and Griff's Mother and his Grandmother had agreed to this meeting.

Coming from late afternoon December Montreal cold, entering his Grandmother's warm apartment, the presence of furniture and objects that Griff remembered -- Persian rugs, a weathered wood hall chest that had once stood in an 18th century general store; a Maurice Cullen winter painting of the woods near Montreal; bookshelves lined with his deceased grandfather's books; a framed photograph of Griff in his Washington Huskies uniform -- was reassuring. Absent were photographs of Genevieve skating. "Bonjour, Mamie," Griff said. Tentatively.

"Today, English is acceptable, Griffie," she replied.

Surrounded by five glasses, on the polished mahogany coffee table was a bottle of Dubonnet. No one was expecting beer, but Claude had arrived with two bottles of Domaine de Grand Pre, and Griff was bearing an assortment of mixed pecans, walnuts, cashews, almonds, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, and peanuts. He set the can on the table beside the Dubonnet. "There are bowls in the kitchen, Griffie," Mamie remarked.

Since Claude was the only one in the family who was interested in mathematics, this was a safe topic, which in Griff's memory his Father introduced when silence or arguments occurred.

"It has been a long time since we talked about Donald Knuth's 'Notes on generalized Dedekind sums'", Claude commented.