In Rukavina family written history, perhaps the preeminent distillation of my grandmother Nettie came in a note she left for my father (her son) one day, taped to the back window of her house in Brantford, Ontario:

For those of you who don’t read Pig Latin, that’s “the key is under the back porch in basket.”

My grandmother placed a lot of faith in the notion that those of the criminal element were not skilled at foreign languages.

And in her son (who was).

It worked.

My father saved the note all these years, in an accordion file marked “Rukavina Memorabilia.”