Have you been separated from the person who your life revolves around? When my sister Danavan and I were five, we moved apart from our mother, Tara. Our mother was a single parent and needed help watching us. Therefore, the best decision my mother could make was to send my sister and I to move in with our grandparents. So my twin sister and I moved from Syracuse, New York to Palm Coast, Florida. We lived with my grandparents for three years, from first grade through third grade.

While we were away, my mother worked hard to support us financially. But during the summers, my mother would make time to see us. When my mother visited, she took my sister and I to SeaWorld and Universal Studio. We didn’t know anything about the amusement park and these trips were unexpected.

I got to feel like a regular kid with the excitement of hanging out with my lovely mother. I am thankful for my mother taking us to a place when we never asked and exploring it together. I cherished the moments my mother was there with us, before she had to leave us again.

At the time, my sister and I didn’t know how to use the house phone. So it was hard to call her when she wasn’t with us for months. My sister and I cried every time my mom left us. My mother knew the reason why she had to leave us, but we didn’t. We were too young to understand what was going on. My sister and I didn’t know, nor question the reason why she left us with our grandparents.

In 2010, my sister and I were nine years old and moved back in with our mother in Lowell, Massachusetts. My grandparents were getting sick and couldn’t take care of us easily anymore. It was difficult learning to live with our mother again. We slept in the living room for a few years. Some things were the same, speaking in broken English, doing chores. But, it took some time to for us to be united after a long time. I missed my grandparents since the day we left them. My grandma was a mother figure to me and took good care of us, like her own.

With my mother, we were taught to be more independent, to do stuff on our own, but that help was there when we needed it. My sister and I were shy at first as, but as we went to school we slowly become more outgoing, we became more comfortable. My mom started to trust us when we hung out with friends or had sleepovers. From then on, we would try to visit our grandparents over the summer vacations. My grandmother taught me how to use a phone, to contact her while we were far away. When I missed my grandparents, I would make time to call them and they were really happy to hear from us. My grandmother loved when we called. We would talk about how our life was going, how we were doing.

But I still struggled to share things with my mom. During my freshman year, I was going through a hard time, I had just gone through my first break up. I didn’t know how to express myself to my mother, to tell her what was going on. One night I came in to my mother’s room and cried. She asked what was wrong, but I just kept crying. But I felt I needed her to be with me. There was something in me that knew that my mother would be the one who could stop me from crying. She kept asking, “What is wrong?” and finally I told her about the break up and about worrying what others would think. My mom told me not to worry about what others thought. She gave me a big hug.

Now, when I feel down, I need her to be with me, I need her company. And I feel lucky to be close to her.

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