They must have mellowed out like most other grandparents after the flush and fever of firstborn performance had receded to the wings of second generations. Gradually perfection and Leviticus gave way to Genesis—that canny compendium of bedtime stories funnier to tell than the stony book of Law. Loving, yes, but more upright with Mary, Joachim, once old, grew fond of going down on all fours to play the donkey beneath the bouncy Jesus on his way in the yard to make-believe Jerusalem. With every new inch of silver lining struck in the black storm clouds of her hair, Anne began to smile more widely. The strength she had taught her daughter— lessons hard and useful to shadow workers— softened some for the cherished grandson, who learned second-hand from mother the longer strands of matrilineal power. Always close before they died, leaving daughter-mother orphaned, they are nonetheless near today; Joachim and Anne in the lines of your palm; in the works of your hand; in the ancestral song the Earth Herself sang the hour She gave you birth.