My daughter has no grandparents.

My daughter doesn’t have grandparents. My wife lost her parents while she was still in her teens, and I never really knew my father, and he died a decade ago. My mother is a distant memory. I have never met anyone who didn’t have their grandparent for some portion of their lives. Even though we can do nothing about it, I still feel as if our child is (somehow) going to be shortchanged.

I have fond memories of being shipped off to Jamaica as a child to spend the summer with my mother’s family. Flying on the plane, all alone, made me feel like I had superpowers. As the world (which was big to me then and enormous to me now) moved below me, the flight attendants gave me food (this is back when they still had food on planes), made sure that I had a blanket and a pillow, and spent more time with me than any of the other passengers. When I landed, I knew that I wasn’t in Brooklyn anymore.

The colors were bigger, louder, more visible. My mother’s and aunt’s accents were nothing compared to the “waterfall talk” of my cousins. And there was my grandmother. Don’t get me wrong, my grandfather was an amazing man. Over 6’4”, strong as anything; hands so big that when he spanked me, his fingertips would wrap around to the side of my butt. He always had a kind word for every person he came into contact with, and forced me and my uncle (who was only three years my senior) to do the same thing. My uncle learned this lesson better than I did. Despite all this, grandma was magick.

With little effort, there was food everywhere. Ox tails, chicken, goat, pones would appear at every meal—meat was a rarity to some of the rural folk. They were broke (me and my mom were broke, but we at least had TV and an indoor toilet) but no one ever went hungry. Not even the neighbors, if grandma was cooking.

Me and my mom—and there was just the two of us—fought incessantly (even when I was only five)—but my people (eleven lived in the same yard) on the island raised their voices in joy as well as anger. And nobody carried anger to bed with them.

I always cried when summer ended. For just over two months, I knew where I came from and that my life did not have to only be dust-head Viet Nam veterans, sub-standard high-rise projects living, or ‘get home before the streetlights come on.’ While I was in Jamaica, I was loved. There was absolutely no question about this. My mother did not have the capacity to do so—she tolerated, not loved me.

My wife and I love our daughter with everything we are—but I wonder if that is enough. There is something about grandparents—and their histories—that is special. We’ve tried to build a small network of elders for our girl to be around. Aubuelos and Abuelitas, Lolas and Lolos, Titos and Titas, and Ninangs fill the void somewhat, but our baby has no blood grandparents.

Maybe I’m making too big a deal about this. We are great parents and are doing everything that we can to have her surrounded by the best people possible. But will it be enough? We can take her to Jamaica (I still have a few cousins there) and my grandmother is still alive (but cancer and blindness have robbed her of her light), but she now lives in the States. Ancestry is very important to me and my wife.

We are links in a long lineage and it feels good to know that we are a part of something that spills pack in into history, with potential to continue into the future. We come from somewhere. And I want my daughter to know this.

I was never much of a photographer, so I have very few pictures of my growing up and visiting the island. But what I do have is a sharp mind and a gift for storytelling. My baby girl will know about every meal that her great-grandmother cooked for me, every time her great-grandfather scared me; the hugs that my grandmother gave me—she hugged me so hard that I became trapped between her boobs. She will know how I used to sneak around at night to watch my grandparents hold hands, touch and kiss.

But most of all, she will know what love feels like because, in the end, this is my greatest memory of my grandparents.