Courtesy Nicole Johnson
- My grandparents raised me and my brother, and they were older than my friends' parents.
- They were more strict than other parents, but there were also benefits to their age.
- They also became loving and affectionate great grandparents to my kids.
I can't remember the first time I realized how different my family was from my friends' families, but the feeling followed me right into college and my adult life afterward. My parents both had drug addictions and split up by the time I was 10 months old. My father got remarried and disappeared from my life, and my mother retreated to what seemed like the other side of the world, Southern California. She died of a drug overdose when I was 7.
In my parent's absence, my grandparents raised me and my brother. We also had an extended family helping out and a foster mother, Esther, who started taking us during the week when my grandmother went to work. Soon, we stayed with Est and her three biological children on weekends and for certain holidays.
I always felt like my family was different
We lived in a city just outside Boston and were not what the 1980s nuclear family we were surrounded by looked like. I wanted so desperately to be normal. On the sitcoms I grew up with, kids went to their moms and dads to help solve whatever problems they had. Then, 30 minutes later — 22, if you don't count commercials — the issue was fixed.
Most of my friends had a mother and a father. I watched them go to father-daughter dances. Some of their parents were divorced but still involved in their lives. They didn't have to wonder who to make the card out to for Mother's Day or if they could make two because they didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings by leaving them out. I never saw them ask how to get a Father's Day card to their dad because they didn't have his address. For Mother's Day, I went to the cemetery, stole flowers from a random gravesite, and searched for my mother's grave. I never found her.
While I loved my grandparents, being raised by them was confusing to me and to every parent who ever asked if they could call my mom about a sleepover or check in about a bake sale. Every time I made a new friend, it also meant making a fresh introduction to my unusual family. "No, I don't have a mother," I remember saying so often it seemed to become a cursory part of any conversation I had with my friends' parents.
"Who do you live with?" They would ask as confusion was replaced with sadness when I answered.
My grandparents were strict; they came from a different generation when kids had adult responsibilities. I could cook dinner at 10 and knew how to wash and hang curtains. I spent the Saturdays of my youth cleaning the house alongside my grandmother, who believed cleanliness was next to Godliness. Sometimes my friends would come to see if I could play, and I would have to send them away in what felt like a Cinderella moment.
They were different from my friends' parents. They dressed differently, listened to music from a different era, and held beliefs based on how and when they were raised. My grandmother and grandfather were the children of immigrants. They had witnessed the Great Depression and World War II. Hard work and their belief in God were the standards they lived and died by. They didn't care to discuss mental health, believed kids should be seen and not heard, and we've always had different political views.
Courtesy Nicole Johnson
There were benefits to being raised by my grandparents
While being raised differently from most of my peers wasn't easy, it also had benefits. It was through my grandparents that I learned some of my greatest lessons. I knew the words to every single song from the 1950s and 1960s.
When my friends and I went through a phase where we were obsessed with the 1950s, I had access to people who lived through the era and looked back on it fondly. My grandparents even allowed me to have a 1950s birthday party where we played their records and learned their dances.
My friends loved my grandparents, who were always eager to have them over for dinner or a sleepover, as long as chores were done. My grandmother loved to sit and talk with us and hear the latest gossip. Being raised by my grandparents also gave me an appreciation for hard work and seeing things through.
Gram and Gramps also went on to become caring and attentive great grandparents to my kids. Because of them, I had a place to grow up alongside my extended family. I am forever grateful, even if my childhood didn't look the same as my friends.