LinkedIn on Monday, March 23, 2026
A long time ago, I went to went to see my grandmother – my mother’s mother – who, well into her nineties, was living out the last few years of her life at a seniors’ home. There in her room, she held court in a manner of speaking, sitting in a chair, talking for a while to some of my cousins and me. Many years later, I’d have no memory of the event were it not for the moment when she told one particular cousin that she, my grandmother, matriarch of our family, thought the dress my cousin was wearing was particularly unattractive. It was a strangely mean and embarrassing thing to say, but how she made my cousin feel that day never crossed her mind.
