This is Annie long before she became my grandmother.  

The daughter of Italian immigrants, she was born September 30, 1914 in New York City, just two months after the start of World War I.

She was 14 when Wall Street crashed, issuing in the Great Depression, and 27 when America, along with her brothers, entered World War II.

Her family lost everything in the Depression and never recovered financially.

Life was hard, and in a city teeming with people from different places, religions and cultures, it was often unkind.

But that’s my retelling. Hers would have sounded completely different.

Ask her about the Depression and she’d tell you about the “pictures” she’d sneak in to see.

Ask about the War, and she’d talk about butter (there wasn’t any) or the time she dyed her best friends wedding dress black to go on a date with my grandfather.

She showed no prejudice, held no hatred and seemed immune to regret.

It may sound like she simply ignored the unpleasant.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  

She felt sadness, grief and anger all with an intensity (and volume) that couldn’t be missed.

The crazy thing is, those negative emotions would blow in and blow back out again as quickly as they’d come and within a moment, she’d be back to whatever she’d been doing prior.

Without a story attached, emotion has nothing to hold onto, and Annie only told stories that delighted her.

She lived life on her own terms, asking forgiveness rather than permission.

She could see people, exactly as they were, and love them for it.

In the 44 years that she was my grandmother, she only gave me one piece of advice.

“Honey,” she said, “have a lot of sex.”

At a time when it’s hard to find good news anywhere, it helps to look at the world through my Annie lens.

So far, it’s never failed me.