By Shannon Whitmore 
My husband and I both grew up with one set of grandparents living across the street from us. We spent our childhoods between two homes, feeling equally at home in both. We ate meals at two kitchen tables, had spots on two couches, slept in two beds that were each called our own. We grew up with a strong sense of family, and our families were close in every sense of the word. My entire extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins) all lived within 15 miles of each other. My husband’s family all lived in the same state, which is impressive since his mom was one of five. We grew up surrounded by the people who loved us most.
Our parents dreamed of the day when they would become the grandparents living across the street. They dreamed of a future when we would all be grown up, with children of our own, living close enough for the cousins to see each other regularly. But dreams don’t always come true, and sometimes reality is nothing like what we imagine for ourselves.
My husband is a strict rule-follower, so it shocked everyone when he broke his mother’s most important rule—family stays together. He decided to complete his graduate studies at a southern university, hundreds of miles from home. Even then, his mom expected him to come home when he was finished. But he didn’t. Instead, he married another transplanted northerner living in the South, and we had two southern babies. Our family was no longer close.
But Nana worked hard to hold her family together. While many people her age were thinking about downsizing, she and her husband decided to buy a bigger house, one with lots of bedrooms and a huge playground in the backyard. They bought a house where we could feel at home. Our children have their own room with their own beds, and they love being at Nana’s. It is a place they enjoy visiting, never want to leave, always want to return to. They love their Nana’s home because they know their Nana loves them.
My mother-in-law could have given up on her dream when her son moved away. Once she realized he wasn’t coming back, she could have abandoned one dream and focused on another. She could have focused all her time and energy on the one child who stayed, the daughter who married a local man and is raising her children not far from Nana.
But instead, my mother-in-law shaped her life to fit her dream for her family. She bought a house that would be filled with her grandchildren’s voices. She bought a house where we could all feel at home. She did what she needed to do to make sure her family stayed close—because Nanas hold the family together.
by Carolyn Moore 
by Brianna Baranowski 
by Jenny Albers 
