I’m an adult, but my grandmother makes my shirts. The ones with good wicking properties that I wear on my morning runs. Five days per week she sits behind an industrial sewing machine in a room full of them, all cream-colored with metallic details. The machines, that is. The people, mostly women, have shades of brown, resilient skin that has outlived civil war. They rarely giggle. At times, they laugh, eat, go to the bathroom, flirt with ideas, fan themselves with their hands. But for most of the day, they are taciturn, patiently outlasting the drudgery, anticipating evening mass or a phone call from my mother. They aren’t all awaiting my mother’s call. They each have their own daughters. Their sons, however, are dead — a few daughters, too. Not all of them, but enough to dress in black for years. Some of the calls travel long distances. International calls from the United States, mostly. The lucky ones are in Canada — because of the egalitarian policies. The ones who are luckier still are in Vancouver. They ski. Not the daughters, but their children. Skiing is lovely if you can tolerate the ceremony of it all, and the other skiers. My grandmother, however, doesn’t care much for winter sports, even when she’s sewing useful, sometimes clandestine pockets into climate-resistant attire. She cares only about my mother, neat stitches, and, indirectly, about Jesus. She also thinks Richard Dean Anderson, the actor who played MacGyver in the eponymous 1980s television show that was a primetime darling in El Salvador, is a babe. I agreed, but I never said as much. I was eight and visiting my mother’s motherland for only the second time; an admission of that kind would have been about as well received as an incurable retrovirus.

In the factory where the women sew, there’s piped-in outdated pop music, the kind that I listen to during my morning runs through the park. Yesterday, it was the Pointer Sisters, who, by the way, began as a duo and progressed to a quartet before hitting their stride as a trio. From time to time, I wonder if they will ever be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — would they include Bonnie, the fourth sister? Not that being inducted matters much, but since the club exists, it seems they should be invited.

I’ve also wondered whether my grandmother and I ever listen to the same song at the same time. I imagine it’s the Whitney Houston cover of Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love,” a rare track available only on the Japanese release of her 1990 album I’m Your Baby Tonight, which fell somewhere betwixt the Robyn and Bobby eras. The song was given new life a few years ago by a Norwegian deejay who, as far as I can tell, sped up the tempo and kept the vocals mostly intact. It’s not Houston’s best song, but I suspect my grandmother and I are united by an appreciation for deep cuts.

My grandmother doesn’t only sew. She can balance laundry baskets on her head, mold moistened corn flour into perfectly round discs, and till the land — any land. At least, I think she can. The older I get, the more difficulty I have disentangling memories from fiction. What I am certain of is that she and my mother talk over the phone every day. More than forty years of this. The open channel between them means my grandmother knows everything about me — that I don’t go to church, that I’m gay and married, that I studied public health in graduate school, that I have two children, and that while I’m not usually drawn to sweets, I never turn down an eclair. But apart from a few embellished tales, I know nearly nothing about her, and I likely never will. My grandmother refuses to visit our country because of what it did to her country, and I won’t go to her country because I’m afraid to fly. It has crossed my mind to call her, but frankly, it’s too late to begin that sort of relationship. And it’d be insincere. Besides, she died several years ago.

Of all the things my childhood friends had that we didn’t — backyards, basements, blue eyes — grandparents was the one I cared about least. I knew an older generation of humans existed, that they visited their respective grandchildren on holidays and odd Sundays, and that they sent birthday gifts. I met several of these older, curved-spine versions of my friends, some of whom lived in mother-in-law apartments or in third bedrooms that we were directed to walk past quietly. But I didn’t long for grandparents. Never. In fact, the dearth of older humans in my formative years left me wary of the elderly well into adulthood. I saw them as fragile and damaged, smelly and curmudgeonly, useless and burdensome. Scary, too. Akin to my discomfort around dogs and cats; we didn’t have pets either.

The three times I met my grandmother, I found the skittishness to be mutual. In retrospect, her distance was reasonable. My country had killed one of her children, radicalized another, and stolen the third. My siblings and I were reminders, maybe even avatars, of yanqui imperialism. If the United States had minded its goddamn business, El Salvador might have been just fine. And her family intact. After all, it’s true.

My mother dreams of her mother still, but I seldom think of her. Except when I return from my morning runs, after I struggle out of my sweat-soaked shirt and peel off my wet shorts and underwear and hang them on the hook of the bathroom door. That’s usually when I glimpse “Made in El Salvador” in the lining. In those moments, I envision a factory and a petite woman with a gray pageboy, sitting, subtly caved at the shoulders, a compressed history between her vertebrae. I’m not sure why I imagine her there; my grandmother, while capable with a needle, never worked as a seamstress. The factory, however, exists and is owned by an outdoor clothing company that underpays her and everyone else. It’s one of many companies that have negotiated profitable contracts at the expense of worker rights and environmental protections, and which are possible only because of the trade agreements, paramilitary groups, and pliable governments that my country wrote, funded, and propped up. A history no one ever invokes when they speak of the waves of criminals, caravans, or cardiovascular disease.

At the height of the pandemic, while my children and I were battling COVID-19, my parents drove an hour to bring us sandwiches, a week’s worth of grapes, tangerines, ginger-orange juice, a few snacks, and some rapid tests. While they unloaded the munitions, my kids waved and screamed from our apartment window — Abuela! Abuelo! Up here! My parents remained beside their double-parked car for a few minutes, waving and blowing kisses, before making their way back home.

I see now what the fuss was about. As it concerns grandparents, that is. I realize what I missed. I see what my parents went without. All of it amounts to love, but specifically, it’s support. Someone to comfort them, someone to interrupt the madness, someone to reattach a button. Older, savvier, more patient recruits for our small, defenseless unit. In a cold and unforgiving land, they might have made all the difference.

My place on the ladder of upward mobility, that crawl toward the American Dream, is better appointed than my parents’ was — is — but I’m not above support. Sometimes, when my mother and I are on the phone, she hears my kids in the background, yelling or fighting. She perceives the rev in my timbre as I attempt de-escalation. “Put them on,” she says. “Abuela wants to talk to you,” I announce. In seconds, they’ve snatched the phone from my hands. My mother takes turns talking to them both, asking them about their days — what they learned, what they ate, what they played. She reminds them of imminent birthdays or holidays, moments when she and my father will disregard all of my parenting directives and spoil them in a manner I’ve never before witnessed, much less experienced. Before my kids hand the phone back to me, she reminds them to be nice and respectful. “Your parents have been working all day, and they’re tired,” she’ll say. “Okay?” “Okay, Abuela.” Her intervention buys me enough time to recalibrate. To allow the cortisol to subside. To grant me some perspective.

I’m left wondering, what would our lives have been like back then with more help? Did it have to be so stressful? Was this immigrant rite of passage necessary? Would a pair of grandparents have been sufficient counterweight to an imbalanced system? I think about this from time to time. In particular, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings when I’m peeling off the shirt with the wicking properties. Except when it rains heavily or snows. Or when the clothing company eventually moves its factory. To Guatemala. Or Vietnam.