Christine Baranski

And I had really the good fortune of...

having a roommate with such an extraordinarily gentle, beautiful and vivacious woman.

Her friends loved her.

She spoke beautiful Polish and she was known to being a wonderful public speaker in Polish.

And she had a very wealthy friend who would take Nana on trips to Europe because for the pleasure of her company, she would take Nana all over.

And Nana would come home with, you know, souvenirs and things from...

Warsaw from Paris for London and she had you know stamps on her luggage back in the days when travel was glamorous and Pan Am and something oh wow you traveled Pan Am um and how did your mother your actual mother get on with her mother-in-law Nana your grandmother um

There was quite a bit of tension there.

My mother always claimed that Nana would be ill during the day, on a day when she was entertaining her friends, but suddenly she came alive when the guests arrived, and then she'd be up till two in the morning having a grand old time.

She thought Nana was a bit of a diva, and she probably was.

But my mother was raised in Buffalo, in the Depression,

walked to school with newspapers in her shoes, ate jelly sandwiches for all the years of the Depression.

And as I said, she didn't marry my father till after the war.

And then there's more story to follow.

Once I turned eight years old, my life changed dramatically.

But my mother did live with, had to live with her mother-in-law, which I think is...

under any circumstances.

He was a big, well-built man,

Also very gentle, very sweet.

I just have such a strong memory of Sunday mornings.