"My grandma Ola says that yellow is the first color she ever remembers seeing. It was just there, she says. Her mama dressed her in yellow, and back in Alabama there were yellow curtains in the kitchen. Their house sat between two willows. They were yellow in spring" (p. 1)

"I didn't know that Mama believed in God until I heard her in the bathroom in the airport praying. Just praying like she did it all the time—talking to God like he was her friend Caroline and they were having lunch downtown.
She acted like she knew God, had spoken to him before and everything" (p. 5).

"I can't imagine Ola knitting me anything. She does send me pamphlets on world hunger and the environment. And she sent me a T-shirt from Jamaica when she went there to a reggae festival. Ola has sent me beads from Africa...