While my grandmother Mam was invaluable to me, she followed a more traditional path of getting married young and enduring through a difficult marriage to a very temperamental man—not something that interested me in the slightest. My great aunt Nona always longed to get married and have children, but unfortunately, it never happened. Tita took care of her parents and siblings at the age of 15, went on to teach for 40 years, founded a school, raised four children and remained married for more than 50 years.
But Toe was a maverick.
