Seven years old is when I started to live with my grandma. Life living with a grandparent is very different from living with your parents, and it happens more than you think.

When I was seven years old, I learned a new language called “Hinko.” English is my first language, and the only language I have ever known at that time, made it extremely difficult to learn. Like any other person that may be bilingual, it affected how I communicate with my grandma daily. It taught me the importance of speaking with tone. It changed my perspective of new languages, and it expanded my thoughts and made me more open to other languages.

Family traditions for me are not your typical Christmas or Halloween, but it is just as embracing. We celebrate a holiday called “Eid,” where we celebrate fasting during a month called Ramadan. We wear traditional Pakistani clothes and feed the family with a variety of foods. We also have weddings where we wear exotic traditional beaded outfits with lots of jewelry and accessories. And loud music. I learned something about my religion throughout the years that I had never known about or used to.

It is essential to build a relationship with your grandparents because it’s so exciting to learn twice the knowledge of daily life and tips and be around them and hear how they lived their lives. If you haven’t, I suggest you visit your grandparents, spend time with them, sew with them, and cook a meal. Get there and build that relationship. This time with my grandmother has been a constant reminder to myself time and time again that “it is not the life we live, it’s the people in it.”