My grandmother had always been short and fat and slightly bent. Her face was a criss-cross of wrinkles running from everywhere to everywhere. She could never have been pretty; but she was always beautiful. She hobbled about the house in spotless white with one hand resting on her waist to balance her stoop and the other telling the beads of her rosary. She was like the winter landscape in the mountains, an expanse of pure white serenity breathing peace and contentment. The phrase 'an expanse of pure white serenity' chiefly conveys a sense of: