I was barely more than a year old when fire tore through our house in the middle of the night.

I don’t remember any of it, of course. Everything I know came from Grandpa, from neighbors, from the stories people told in lowered voices once I was old enough to understand what loss meant. There had been an electrical fault. The flames spread fast. My parents never made it out.

The neighbors stood outside in their pajamas, watching the windows burn orange against the dark, and someone screamed that the baby was still inside.

My grandfather was sixty-seven years old.

He went back in. He came out through the smoke with me wrapped against his chest, coughing so hard he could barely stay on his feet. The paramedics told him he should stay in the hospital for two days because of the smoke he’d inhaled. He stayed one night, signed himself out the next morning, and took me home.

That was the night Grandpa Tim became my whole world.

People sometimes ask what it was like growing up with a grandfather instead of parents, and I never quite know how to explain it, because to me, it was never unusual. It was just my life.

Grandpa packed my lunches with little handwritten notes tucked beside my sandwich. He did it every day from kindergarten until I finally begged him to stop because middle school was cruel enough without finding “Have a great day, kiddo” in front of other people.

He taught himself how to braid hair from YouTube videos and practiced on the back of the couch until he could do two neat French braids without getting lost halfway through. He showed up to every school play, every awards ceremony, every choir concert, clapping louder than anyone else in the room.