Photo

It must be elementary school graduation. My brother is wearing a tie, holding a rolled up diploma, and smiling for the mystery photographer as newly spilled punch drips down the front of his button-up shirt. My mother is right there, looking down at her firstborn, one arm casually slung across his shoulder (like it belongs there, like it will always be there), her mouth turned up in a grin.

But it’s my grandma who catches my gaze and won’t let it go. She’s seated in a chair behind them in a blue-striped dress, camera in hand. That smile of hers is imprinted in my most primal memory—the pretty, pursed lips, the high, round, happy cheeks. I can’t see that smile without feeling her cheek pressed against mine and hearing her murmur in my ear.

And her eyes. She’s gazing upward, toward my mom. Quiet pride pours from her face. She’s watching her first baby mother her first baby.

This photo makes me feel something new and strange. I am jealous of my mother.

For almost all the time my mom got to be a mother, her own mother lived down the street. The two of them teamed up to take us to pediatrician appointments. They conspired on our Christmas gifts. They talked over, around, and at each other on their long-corded kitchen phones as they bustled around making separate dinners together.

So often together. As I walked home from my first day of middle school, hugging my books in my arms, a car pulled up next to me. “Hey, you big beautiful middle-schooler! Need a ride?” It was my mom and my grandma, coming home from K-mart. They had bought me a shirt and some cool colored socks.

In a matter of months, Mom was gone. Grandma was still there, with her stories and soft arms and that pride always pooling in her eyes, but my chain was forever missing its most crucial link.

And now motherhood is mine. That still surprises me, thirteen years in. My motherhood has been different than my mom’s was; I started out later and much more on my own. But there was always Grandma, on the phone, all over my Facebook posts, telling our stories and giving me a framework I could fit my own little family inside.

Grandma died in May. It’s been a full year of radio silence. The blossoms came back but of course she did not. And yet, the silence doesn’t feel like a full stop. I write a post about my new kitchen sink being so deep it can hide dirty dishes, and her reply types itself out in my head: “Just don’t let those dishes pile up, honey, and you won’t have a problem—ha!”

My first-grader comes home brokenhearted on her last day of school, and I can hear my grandma on the phone: “You know, your mother was always like that at the end of the year, sensitive and nostalgic. All the other kids were thrilled about summer break and she’d be crying.” I think Grandma-in-my-head will always have her input ready.

But these days I find myself searching my memory for what she’d tell me about raising teenagers, and that’s where I draw a blank. I know she would have things to say—she raised five of them and she always had things to say. My own mom didn’t live long enough to need the teenager advice, and now that I need it . . . well.

Of course Grandma would have no idea about cell phone limits and social media supervision, I tell myself. I have close friends and relatives I can always turn to. And don’t forget, I can Google any question and have hundreds of experts telling me what to do. But none of them can tell me what we do. I miss the we.

I love my independence. But right now, as I sit by an open window with the lilac breeze and the late-spring sunlight slipping in, I want my privacy invaded. I yearn for unasked-for advice. The telling and retelling of the same old stories. I want the actual arm around my shoulder. The two of them pulling up beside me as I walk down the road. That shining nod of approval in the background of my days.