My mother didn't raise us Jewish, but my daughter wanted to become involved with the synagogue.

My grandfather died in 1952. I never did meet him, but I did meet my grandmother and my aunts, who lived to a ripe old age.

My relationship with my mother is fine. It took us a while to get there, but it's fine. Because we're completely the opposites of each other, so we didn't find our place with one another until about a year and a half ago. It's been a bit, like, a hit-and-miss situation.

I know how difficult and expensive it was for us to survive mother nature's tail a year ago - I can't even imagine how challenging it is for those in the Gulf Coast both then and today; our thoughts and prayers go out to them for their extensive loss of life and property.

We couldn't really get anyone at the hotel to tell us anything, so we called my mother. She told us that it looked like Hurricane Emily was headed straight for us.

She handles us very well, kind of like a mother figure. She doesn't take any crap.