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My mother grew up with her grandparents. Her parents died in an accident when she was three, so she spent her childhood years (1937 to 1952 when she was 18) with her grandparents. By the time she was 18, she was on her own. Both her grandmother and grandfather had died.

But the bigger result than being alone at 18 is that my mom has always had ideas a generation behind where they should be, behind where her peers ideas were. She is and always has been the very definition of old-fashioned (my mom's grandmother was forming her ideas about the world in 1900!) Mom knows this... all her life, her thinking has been a generation behind. She's 74 now, and even now she acts older than her years.

My mom's grandparents did their best, but both mom and I think she would have been better off with aunts or uncles who would have been the right generation to be her parents.

posted 4 years, 5 months ago
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