I bring my kids to swim lessons on Monday afternoons. The swim school is great but overwhelming: too many harried parents and chaotic, wet children.

There’s a toddler and father pair who are always there at the same time as us. The little girl must be around two years old and her name is Margaret. “Come on, Margaret!” her father repeats over and over as he tries to get her showered, get her dry, get her changed into clothes. “This way, Margaret! Over here!” She toddles along slowly behind him examining the other children, their shoes, the tile on the wall, the fuzz on her sock. “Come on, let’s go, Margaret!”

My grandma was Margaret. She was ninety years old when she died in February and I only ever knew her as an old person. But time seems to fold when I hear “Over here, Margaret!” It’s my great aunts’ and great uncles’ voices calling to a young Margaret, the last of eleven children, in the yard of the old house on the farm. She probably ignored their commands too, or at least took her time in responding. I would only know her much later as a purveyor of fudge and apple sauce, a hilarious, happy woman who never worried, never hesitated to yell at her children and grandchildren, loved to travel, and always had ice cream in her freezer. But she too once toddled through life with the same brand-new curiosity of this little Margaret.

It’s a strange thing but when I drive away from that swim school on Monday afternoons, I feel just a little bit closer to my grandma. Especially when I have to yell at my own freshly-showered children who are punching each other in the backseat of the car.