Grace Paley was seventy-eight when I finally met her in New York in 2001, at the French Roast, a coffee shop on the corner of 11th Street and 6th Avenue. She was tiny and I towered over her to kiss her hello. She had a beautiful open face, with high cheekbones and widely spaced eyes. Her hair was unruly, curly like mine. It had been fair, but now it was grey. She was five years older than my mother would have been. But mama died at forty-nine years of age so it was hard to imagine her as an old lady in my mind’s eye.