Evidently, after naming my mother Anne at the hospital, my grandmother got home and changed her mind. Nana decided she liked the name Susan better and for years that’s what she called my mother. When I was born, my mother named Susan right from the get-go. When the three of us were together, sometimes there was confusion as to whom Nana was talking.

My childhood summers were spent on Buzzards Bay near Cape Cod roaming hidden beaches, wild-blueberried woods, and sunny, flowered fields. Queen Anne’s Lace grew wild along the roads there and I often picked handfuls of it for my mother. I favored ones with the wide frothy heads of tiny petals on long, fiberous stalks. I told her that Queen Anne’s Lace were her flowers, since her name is Anne and she was and is the undisputed queen of our family. I never see one without thinking of her.

Where…