I became my grandson’s guardian when he was barely two years old.

My own son had made it painfully clear he wasn’t ready to be a father, and the child’s mother disappeared without leaving so much as a forwarding address. One day she was there, the next she was gone. And in the silence she left behind, a toddler stood in my living room clutching a stuffed rabbit, looking for someone to anchor him.

So I did.

I fed him, bathed him, rocked him through fevers and bad dreams. I memorized the way he liked his pancakes cut into triangles and how he needed the hallway light on just a crack at night. His small fingers once curled around mine for balance; before I knew it, those same hands were steady and strong, tying their own shoes and carrying schoolbooks.