“I thought Mom was really good at math in school,” I say. “I mean, she had to be to go through all the years of college to be a vet.”

“She was good at it, but that doesn’t mean it was easy for her.” He sits down at the table and turns my math book around so it’s facing him. “Let’s just take a look-see, shall we?” He pats his shirt and pulls his glasses out of the pocket where they always are, then unfolds the arms and loops one over each ear. “Which one are we stuck on?”

I point to number one.

“Delilah made boysenberry jam and strawberry jam. She made enough boysenberry jam to fill one-fourth of a jar,” he begins, reading the question out loud. “If she made one-half as much strawberry jam as boysenberry jam, how much strawberry jam does she have?”

“Who cares?” I answer, throwing my hands up.

Gramps ignores me and opens my notebook and picks up the pencil.

“Look at it this way,” he says as he begins to draw a cylinder in the center of the page, with a little bit of an indented lip, like the screw top of a jar, along with a second one right next to it. He draws a rectangular label across the front of each and, in his tiny, all-caps lettering, labels one BOYSENBERRY and the other STRAWBERRY. “Here’s your two jars of jam, right?”

“Okay,” I grumble.

“Read the question again, and tell me how much boysenberry Daisy has.”

“Delilah,” I correct. “Um. One-fourth of a jar.”

He turns the notebook toward me and says, “Good. And if we want to know how much one-fourth of a jar is, why don’t we start by splitting this jar into four parts?” Then he draws a line in the middle of both jars, right through the center of the labels. “Right now, there’s one-half and one-half, right?”

“Right,” I agree.

Then Gramps writes on one side of the jar: 1/2 on the upper section and 1/2 on the lower section. He draws a line to split the top half in half again, and another line to split the bottom half in half. “And now we have four equal parts. How many fourths is it to this line here?” he asks, pointing with the tip of the pencil on the first line.

“One-fourth.”

“Yep, and how many fourths here?” he asks, pointing to the second line.

“Two-fourths,” I answer.

“Or?” He moves his pencil along the line to the other side where he had written 1/2.

“One-half.”

“Absotutely!” he shouts excitedly. “Next,” he continues, pointing to the third line.

“Three-fourths.” Then I point to the final line and say, “Four-fourths.”

“Or?” Gramps prompts again.

“One whole?” I answer.

“Mm-hmm,” he says, nodding, handing me the pencil. “Now shade in the amount of boysenberry. What was it again, one-fourth?”

I take the pencil from him and shade in one-fourth of the first jar.