My mother welcomed all guests with hospitality as natural to her as arterial blood flow.

Come on in, she’d say, her manicured hand outstretched in greeting. Let me make you comfortable, please have a bite to eat, no, it’s no trouble at all, we’re so glad you’re here. On tiptoe, she’d stretch to the top cupboard where she kept “company” cups, saucers and dessert plates, the ones with the hand-painted cabbage roses which she’d inherited from her mother, who died young.

Later, having consumed at least a quart of sweet iced tea stirred with a sterling silver spoon and a second helping of buttermilk chocolate cake (“Oh, I really shouldn’t, but…”), the relaxed guest would settle at mother’s instruction into daddy’s chair, our most comfortable one. That’s when she’d ask the question:

“And who are your people, dear?”

It’s not that my mother was a snob; she wasn’t. She was known to sucker-punch a pompous ass if he got too full of himself. She neither cared what brand of car you drove, nor what you did for a living, and how somebody dressed meant nothing to her at all, so long as they were clean.

What interested her was lineage, as in “are your people the Joneses in the next county, or the ones who moved away?” As in, “was your mother the lady who won the blue ribbon with her bread-and-butter pickles, or the lady who quit the bridge club because the hostess served wine?”

My mother asked the question because “I am interested in character. There’s no sense going on with somebody who doesn’t have it.”

Mother believed character could not be acquired; you were either born with it, like blue eyes and freckles, or you weren’t. A lifelong racing fan, she said character traveled down through families like bloodlines through horses, as in “Are you the Caroline Kennedy, sired by John Fitzgerald, out of Jacqueline Bouvier, or the Caroline Kennedy whose folks owned the Shady Lane Motel that got shut down for serving liquor to minors?”

It was much easier to find out about somebody’s people – whether they worked hard, drank too much, didn’t put enough in the collection plate -- in mother’s time. Born in 1924, she had few acquaintances outside the Midwest, and lived nearly all her life not far from her Leavenworth, KS, birthplace. “I know where the bodies are buried,” she’d say with a wink.

My father, born in neighboring Trenton, MO, left only to fly fighters in North Africa during World War II. My parents were childhood sweethearts who grew up across the street from one another; my mother never had to ask about his character or his people.

Life got more complicated when my brother and I came along. As Baby Boomers, ours became the most mobile generation in history. I left home for college at 18, and at 21 started trotting the globe as a journalist. Colleagues from Nepal to Cairo found their way to my mother’s pink-Formica kitchen, but still, every Stephen, Srinivassan and Sven got the “And who are your people, dear?” question.

It took me years to figure out it wasn’t their replies so much as the way they talked about their families that influenced my mother’s judgment as to their worthiness as friends. If she detected a love of family, respect for elders, affection for children, and kindness toward animals in their answers, she knew all she needed to know about their “people” who’d “raised them up with character.”

My mother also knew -- just knew -- when somebody, as she put it, “isn’t worthy of you.” Even in post-Pill America, this feminist still brought serious beaux back to Belton, MO, for the iced tea-and-chocolate cake inspection. Mother always noticed if the man of the moment bragged a little too much, cheated a bit at poker, or -- heaven forbid -- patronized her. Few passed the “people question” unscathed.

My future husband did. Talking about his family, he idly picked up a towel and began drying dishes. Mother also noticed him sneaking a leftover sliver of baked chicken to the old cat who never liked anybody. When he fetched her sweater without being asked, he won her over.

“I’m going to like his people,” mom said, “when we meet them at the wedding.”