I am not a grandmother. At this point, my kid informs me I’m unlikely to ever become one. (That’s OK. That’s exactly what I told my mom at his age.) But I was lucky enough to be born to young parents and thus get a lot of exposure to both my grandmothers.

My dad’s mom—my grandmother—was bonkers, and not in a good way. She alienated my parents early on but did not cut ties entirely. She never offered to visit us, and she found excuses to avoid us when we offered to go see her. My mother even tried to work it so that it would be just me to go visit, thinking maybe my grandmother would like to see me without my mean and disappointing parents. No dice. (My favorite excuse over the years was, “Can’t meet up for dinner, sorry; we have squirrels in the attic.” Which is why at 14 “squirrels in the attic” became my new phrase for “batshit crazy,” and why I was delighted at 17 on my first viewing of The Wall to learn that “toys in the attic” was an ACTUAL euphemism dating back to the 1960s.) Back in the days when long-distance was expensive and inconvenient, we talked on the phone on birthdays and holidays, and she was always quite excited to tell me what “the little neighbor boy” was up to. It rankled. She also had a big streak of A Christmas Story’s Aunt Clara in her: While I was, indeed, a girl, I was not perpetually four, and my love of pink did not extend to creepy clown dolls and terrifying teddy bears.

My mom’s mom, on the other hand—she was Grandma. And she was literally everything you could want. She was loving, she was accepting, she was funny. Even better, she thought I was funny, and when she would visit she was always up for whatever adventure I had in mind. She showed up to help with birthday parties; she gave me the best Barbie swag for Christmas. She rode roller coasters with me at Disneyland and Disney World. Unlike my mom, she loved shopping, and she would take me to the good stores, not just JC Penney and Kmart. She loaned me the car in college, even after a terrible trip to San Francisco that resulted in a flooded back seat and a big dent (neither of which was really my fault, but they happened on my watch, so I felt awful).

I was embarrassingly old before I figured out that she was also her own person, and that she had her own things going on when I was not around (which was, like, 50 weeks out of the year). She went to church. She belonged to groups. She helped with events and dinners and I don’t know what all—things that were completely foreign to me, as my family did not go to church and I am pretty sure my mother’s first instinct was always to hide if anyone rang the doorbell. She had opinions. I’d always known that she had advice and experience, but her opinions were generally something she kept to herself, and my grandfather was always the one to tell you what he thought (and thus, what you should think) while she would keep her own counsel and just keep drying dishes while he talked. I think I was 25 before I ever caught her making a face about someone’s behavior and even then she winked and me and put her finger to her lips. I about died.

One of the best things my grandma ever did was make me feel better about my grandmother. I was grousing about whatever slight that woman had committed most recently and said I just didn’t see why she was like that. My grandma cocked her head and said, “I have no idea why she is so unhappy. But I feel sorry for her. She is missing out on SO MUCH fun with you. It’s her loss.”

Can I tell you, those four sentences upended my entire world view. The idea that I wasn’t an actual target and just an unlucky relative of a miserable human being was mind-blowing. And on my better days, it really has affected how I react when people lash out. (But I’m not my grandmother, because I definitely have my off days, too.)

It’s probably clear by now that my grandma’s greatest accomplishment was not one of those Mighty Girl things people like to read about. She had her incredible traits, for sure: She could shoot free-throws for hours without missing. She put up with my grandfather, which was no small feat. She drove back and forth across the country well into her 70s. But her greatest accomplishment was her ability to engage with other people. For a long time I thought it was just me—and I still like to think that what she and I had was a little different from everyone else. My grandfather came home from work one Friday while I was at their house doing laundry on a college break, and he walked into the kitchen and went, “Good lord, it’s just you two? It sounded like a whole sorority in here.” So, yes, we had a lot of fun, but she was just the kind of person who could bring that out. My grandfather always said that “she never met a boring person, which I never understood because everyone I met was boring, and they were all the same people.”

I hope I picked up some of that from her. I try to embody that. I hated being a reporter, as I said in my last post, but I don’t hate people in general, and I like it when I can find some common ground with someone new. I try to honor her accomplishments, and I hope I live up to them.