I spent every summer with my grandparents in a small town. I got to be more independent than I could at home.

I spent two weeks with my grandparents in the Midwest every summer until I was in high school.

They lived in a small town in South Dakota.

While my grandma worked at the hospital during the day and my grandpa ran the local convenience store, I rode all over town on my bike.

I loved that, because I didn’t have the same level of independence back home in Miami.

I can’t imagine letting my son do the same thing at that age, but I have to admit that the independence gave me confidence, especially as a young girl who was often told I couldn’t do many things.

I rode to the community pool on my own or with cousins, with some allowance for admission and concessions.

I had to budget my money and remember basic things like bringing my own towel on my bike and wearing sunscreen.

On even more adventurous days, I went to the local Dairy Queen with a friend to get kids’ meals on our own.

And since we didn’t have cellphones yet, my grandma told me to always leave a note on the kitchen pad, so she’d know where I was.

She saved a few, all stating something like, “Across the street, visiting the horses.” In addition to the freedom I took advantage of, I also wanted to learn about my mom, who grew up there but died when I was an infant.

Before she passed, she arranged for me to spend my summers with her parents.

It was important to her that I get to know her family and spend time where she grew up.

The church I went to on Sundays with my grandparents was the same one she went to and later married in.

One of the three restaurants in town, simply called the Lodge, is where my parents held their reception.

We usually went there for a special dinner at the end of my summer visit.

I knew my grandma was unimpressed, since she’d eaten there so many times, but the experience was magical for me.

Everything I ate, I imagined my mother having too — at her wedding or on her first dates.

I fell in love with a good steak dinner there, sitting next to my grandpa and looking up at him.

I had been told my mom and grandpa were close, and I felt closer to my mom just because I got to sit there and eat a really good steak with her dad.

When I rode up and down the streets until sundown each night, I imagined my mom doing the same thing at my age.

I felt connected to her, and once I experienced that — I was about 8 years old — I wanted more of it.

I wanted to get to know her in a new way, outside all the flat pictures I had been given and other people’s stories about her.

I knew she loved horses, and so did I, but growing up with them, she was comfortable around them and even rode in the local rodeos, winning prizes.

So I asked my grandma if I could learn how to ride, too, and she arranged for lessons with the neighbor next door.

Riding on my own out in those big dusty fields, I felt like I could understand my mom in a way I could relate to.

The Fourth of July was a big deal in South Dakota, so a lot of relatives came back home.

I got to spend time with cousins and extended family that I only got to see that one time of year, as we’re spread out all over the country.

On the day of, there was a big parade that we were either participating in or watching from the sidelines, catching candy.

But then there was the rodeo the night of.

I pretended it was my mom who was the Rodeo Queen that night, out there doing all of those fancy tricks.

It was my favorite – not because of the big fireworks show at the end — but because I got to sit there in the stands, swelling with pride privately at just how amazing my own mom must have been.

I watched her come home from work and pull cucumbers from her summer garden out back for dinner.

She made a cucumber salad that I’ve yet to recreate.

She traded vegetables with her sisters and neighbors from their gardens and had pickling parties with them, preserving all of their hauls for the winter.

They always took time to show me what they were doing, passing on their tricks, and I took note of all of it – how almost everyone in town worked together, offering each other help constantly – as if that’s just what you do.

I didn’t realize until much later that I wasn’t getting to know my mom through things like horses.

I was getting to know my mom through her mom.

Growing up with just my dad back home in Miami, I didn’t have a female figure to learn from.

So I saved all of that curiosity up for my grandmother each summer, observing her and trusting her advice.

She had a large field of nothing but tall grass adjacent to her house, and dragonflies loved it.

I spent days trying to catch one in a jar until she finally told me to sit still.

I tested out her theory the next day and sat down in the field with my jar open next to me and watched as a dragonfly settled right into it.

Like magic, I thought — and I thought my grandma was like magic, too.

I thought it was safe to bet that my mom must have been magic as well.