You can take my Grandmother out of the city, but you can’t take the NYC out of my Bubbie. After living in California for over 50 years she still can’t understand why she shouldn’t shove and elbow people out of the way to board to Monorail at Disneyland. Bubbie says the secret to living happily in New York is a never-ending supply of chutzpah and a good rape whistle. Okay, she may have said “a never-ending supply of chutzpah and a good deli” but I couldn’t hear her very well because her mouth was full of pastrami on rye.

Growing up in a tenement, my grandma had to be a tough cookie at an early age. Her big claim to fame is that James Cagney (yes, that James Cagney of gangster movie fame) tried to kiss her. Unbeknownst to my grandmother, a teenage Jimmy told a bunch of his friends to hide on the roof and watch as he made the move on my 14 year-old grandmother. When Jimmy grabbed Bubbie to kiss her, she pushed him down into the street and told him “if you ever touch me again I’ll cut ya.”

My grandma fearlessly went to clubs in Harlem and visited the bath houses at Coney Island – they weren’t those kinds of bath houses back then, get your mind out of the gutter. I’m grateful for chutzpah because it's hereditary. I pretty much go where I want, do what I want to do and I don’t take crap from anyone, except my grandmother -- after all,  I don't want to get kicked out of the will. Now that my Nanna's older -- and 5,000 miles from Manhattan, she’s gotten much softer. She’s turned into a big mushy matzo ball who still pronounces coffee, “Kwaafie.” When I brought my last boyfriend over to her house, she greeted him with warm cookies, patted him on the hand, and softly whispered in his ear, “if you hurt my granddaughter, I’ll cut ya.”

That’s why I’m grateful for chutzpah.