I became my grandson’s guardian when he was barely two. My son wasn’t ready to be a father, and the child’s mother disappeared without a trace. One day she was there — the next, gone — leaving behind a toddler clutching a stuffed rabbit and searching for someone to hold onto.
So I did.
I fed him, bathed him, comforted him through fevers and bad dreams. I learned how he liked his pancakes cut into triangles and how he needed the hallway light left slightly on at night. His tiny fingers once wrapped around mine for balance, and before I knew it, those same hands were tying shoelaces and carrying schoolbooks. He became the rhythm of my days, and I became the center of his.
I thought our quiet life would continue that way — until the morning everything changed.
He was twelve when she came back.
Dressed sharply and accompanied by a lawyer, she stood at my door and calmly said, “Thanks for your services. I’ll take it from here.” The law was on her side. I begged her to let him choose, but it didn’t matter. I will never forget the sound of his crying as they led him away.
Years passed in silence.
On his eighteenth birthday, I told myself not to hope — until there was a knock at the door.
It was him.
He hugged me tightly and whispered, “I thought about you every day.” Then he placed a set of keys in my hand.
“I’m eighteen now,” he said. “I rented us a house. I want to live with you.”
After six long years, he was finally home again.
