A grandchild's perspective - Doug Parizeau

Gramma once harbored myself and a friend, a fellow 12 year old fugitive, in her basement while the police tried to find whoever had flooded the neighbors' yard by building a dam in the stream behind her house. I imagine the police log in the newspaper looked something like this:

A Wellesley man called emergency services claiming "that Parizeau boy and his friend are always building dams in the stream. I want them in cuffs!" Officers responded to the scene after being told that the two youths had fled into their grandmother's house. Upon arriving at the grandmother's house, officers were allegedly told by the resident "don't you boys have anything better to do?" before being asked to leave.

Gramma was protective of her grandchildren (she really did hide us in her house) and while she probably scolded me herself after this incident, she wasn't about to let the police or anybody else do it.

Whether she was giving praise, criticism, or a piece of advice, Gramma had her own way of being both brutally honest and the most loving person in the world, all at the same time. It doesn't surprise me at all that so many people deeply trusted and loved her because she showed you every single time you talked to her that she cared and that she loved you back.