Is nothing sacred?

Turns out, my step-great-great-grandpa, Robert Peary, may NOT have been the first to discover the North Pole.

Sigh.

I like to think he did, though. Mostly because his granddaughter, my step-grammy, was a wonderful human being in and of herself, in her own right.

This was a lady educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, who, in the Great Depression, had to help the family income by giving piano lessons at 50 cents an hour, but who fed and sheltered any number of roaming "tramps." Who worked herself to the bone, with never a complaint. Who never spoke an ill word of anyone. Who, in time, listened to the earth-stopping woes of a certain 12-year-old (me) with sweet gravity and understanding, and died very much too soon. Beautiful of face, beautiful of heart. Plus, the mother of my own special step-mom.

Maybe it was Grammy who really discovered the North Pole.