Family is incredibly important. This is something I have known for a while, but never really thought about. I have come to realize it increasingly over the past three years at Notre Dame. My parents have been divorced since I was three, and neither parent has remarried. Because of this, I have not experienced a family life in the traditional sense, yet I have always appreciated the uniqueness of my own family. I do know that I will be a little lost when I form my own family because I have little to base family relationships on.

My family consisted of my mother, my older brother, our dog and me. I had grandparents in Connecticut that I rarely saw and grandparents close-by that took care of me frequently. I never saw either of my parents interact with each other except to work out weekend custody arrangements and my father rarely disciplined me — when he tried, both he and I knew it was pointless. However, the thing I feel I have missed most is interaction with my father's family.

I think we all know that divorce separates the immediate family unit, dividing children between their parents, but it also alienates the extended family. I visited my grandma in Connecticut over spring break; it was the tenth time I have seen her, and it was the first time that I had the opportunity to see who she was as a person. We both realized how much we still had to learn about each other and how much we were alike, although she is 86 and I am 21.

We spent the week discussing her college experience, the depression, World War II and my parents. I learned more about my family in five days than I have learned my whole life. We looked at family pictures and talked about my cousins — small things that may seem insignificant, but are incredibly valuable considering I had little previous exposure to them. I had known my grandma as "my grandma," my grandpa's wife and my father's mother. She was a great cook (her specialty was apple pie), she gave big hugs, she was a talented artist and she loved the color pink (her front door was always pink).

Over spring break I saw a different side of her, my grandpa has been dead for three years, and in that time she has become more individually defined. She drove me around Connecticut in her manual transmission Saturn, and she told me about how she was the first child in her family to go to college, that when she graduated she was stuck in the depression without a job and little prospect of finding one.

She told me her father had died when she was ten and her mother had taken over the road construction business that had supported their family. Her mother wore pants and led the horses that ran the road machinery (keep in mind that it was 1924 when her father died, women's lib was a long way off). My grandma is a traditional woman, my grandfather pumped her gas for her until he died, and at 83 she had to learn how to do it herself. However, she was a strong woman, and I learned that a month ago.

Over spring break, I realized how mature I am at 21, and how young my grandmother is at 86. We were able to sit and talk as two women — the barriers of child and adult seemed erased. It was both meaningful and fun; I only wish a long strand of such encounters could have preceded it. It certainly made the bond of family seems so much more important and fragile to me.

• Granny knows best