The Stereotypical Grandma is a sweet old woman, always carrying a plate of freshly baked cookies, who lives just across the river and across the drink. When I was a child, my grandmother was very similar to this interpretation of a fairy tale, but as I grew up, I realized that it played a much more important role in my life than storybooks, and that anyone could have predicted it. When I was thirteen, my mother kicked me out of the house. My grandmother graciously took me in, because my father had no way to take care of me. Three years later, my mother left. There has probably never been a more devastating event in my life. I may have only seen her occasionally, but “never” was a whole new idea. It was always upsetting to never see her at my plays or concerts, but it was completely different to imagine that on graduation night I would have the same problem. That at my wedding, there would be no mother of the bride. That when I had a child, there would be no one to teach me how to take care of a human being. That one day I would receive a phone call telling me she had died, and that when I went to look inside the coffin, I didn't even recognize the woman inside. I wrote two things about my mother that sum us up pretty well. One of them was called You're Perfect…And I Love You. It was a short story about myself struggling with the idea that if I could be the best, my mother would still love me. He won first prize in a writing competition and I couldn't hold back my tears as I read the three pages of my life in front of people I didn't know. Somewhere in this story there are lines expressing the pain of my mother's absence at every school activity, and somewhere in that moment there is irony because she wasn't either in this audience. The other... middle of paper .... ..see it. At seventy-three years old, she has just learned to manage her emotions entangled in these issues, and when she looks at me, she knows where I am and understands. There is nothing more important in the world than having someone who understands. The things she did for me changed my life forever, even though I'm only just beginning to understand them today. It stopped me from opening kitchen cabinets to empty shelves and allowed me to buy new school supplies every year. She gave me a chance to become less angry and supported me as I began to understand myself. She was at every theater performance, band concert, and applauded in the stands when my name was announced at graduation. She became much more to me than a grandmother; she truly transformed into everything I really needed: a lawyer, a guardian angel, a mother.