Some folks wonder what they missed their entire lives. The one night my grandma never had was the one I wanted to give her. I wanted her to accompany me to prom and be my date. However, my stepmother made sure we would both remember it for the wrong reasons after she learned about it.

Most people don’t realize how much growing up without a mother alters you. When mine passed away when I was seven years old, the world seemed to have lost its meaning for a moment. Then Grandma June appeared.

She was more than just my grandma. She was everything. She was there for me through every skinned knee, difficult day at school, and time when I needed reassurance that everything would be well.

She was there for me through every skinned knee, difficult school day, and time when I needed someone. We made school pickups a regular occurrence. Little notes were hidden within the lunches when they arrived. Grandma showed me how to sew a button back on when it came off my blouse and how to scramble eggs without scorching them.

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She became the mother I had lost, the confidante I needed when loneliness set in, and the support system that had faith in me when I had none.

Dad remarried my stepmother, Carla, when I was ten. I recall Grandma making a concerted effort to welcome her. She prepared her own pies, the type that filled the home with the aroma of butter and cinnamon. She even presented Carla with a quilt that she had been working on for months, complete with elaborate designs that must have taken an eternity.

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Carla regarded it as though Grandma had given her a trash bag.

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I wasn’t blind, but I was young. Carla’s nose wrinkled whenever Grandma was around, and I could see it. Her speech sounded tight and fakely pleasant, and I heard it. And everything changed after she moved into our home.

Carla had a fixation on appearances. More expensive than our monthly food are designer handbags. fake eyelashes that gave the impression that she was always taken aback. Every week, I get new manicures that are all a different shade of costly.

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She would talk about “leveling up” our family all the time, as if we were a character in a computer game that she was attempting to improve.

She was frigid, however, toward me.

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She would say, “Your grandma spoils you,” with a curled lip. “No wonder you’re so soft.”

Or, my personal favorite: “You must cut back on your time with her if you want to achieve anything. You are being pulled down by that home.”

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Grandma lived a short stroll away, two blocks distant. Carla, however, pretended to be in another world.

It worsened when I started high school. Carla aspired to be regarded as the ideal stepmother. She would share photos of us together at family dinners and write in the captions how fortunate she was. In reality, though, she hardly recognized my existence.

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She adored the picture. She didn’t love humans, though.

I mumbled once, “Must be exhausting,” as I watched her snap the same coffee photo thirty times.