I had an extraordinary childhood.

When I was about seven years old, I mentioned in front of my entire science class that there had been an exceedingly incredible discovery: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had discovered two exoplanets.

As soon as these words came out of my mouth, my science teacher stared at me and laughed.

I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I remember perfectly how she made me feel. I was making things up. She didn’t believe me. She didn’t believe me at all.

Looking back now, I am not mad at the situation. How could she trust a seven-year-old little girl?

Little did she know that the grandmother of that girl was an incredibly amazing astronomer.

When I was a little girl, I used to spend some weekend nights at my abuelita’s house.

Her house was beautiful, but not the kind of beautiful that you see in interior design magazines. Her house was beautiful because it held countless emotions. As you passed through those doors, you could feel it in the air. Her powerful love and immense knowledge were somehow absorbed by the house she lived in.

Every single time I entered her home, she would take me straight to her studio.

This room was impressive. She had never-ending rows of books about astronomy. She was the living proof that you could never read too much or be over-educated.

I lost myself in her bookshelves. Yet, I found myself there too.

On one of the studio’s tables lied a motorized solar system. This, out of the numerous astronomical related objects in her house, was by far my favorite one.

I could sit there and watch those planets orbit around the sun for hours. My grandma would sit next to me and teach me about the solar system and each individual planet’s characteristics.

By that time, there were nine planets. I remember those little nine spheres; they were charming. Each one had their own color and pattern, and each followed their own path.

The thought was fascinating: individual spheres that somehow were orbiting the sun in perfect and synchronized ways. The spheres’ orbit and rotation were the reason behind the existence of days, nights, months, seasons and years.

It is truly heart-stopping the way the universe works.

I realized that I was just a little girl inside the marvelous green and blue sphere in front of me.

There were billions of other people like me in this universe. There had been billions of others before I was born, too.

How insignificant my life was.

After incredulously gazing at those little planets, she would show me astronomical photographs.

Whenever she displayed pictures of Earth, I stood there not believing what I was seeing. I was somehow inside that beautiful planet.

My memories come as a blur, but one thing I entirely remember is a piece of advice she told me when I was eleven years old.

“Earth is so beautiful that if planets had feelings, they would be jealous of its beauty. Ivana, never go a single day without realizing that you live in an amazingly beautiful and interesting world. Feel amazed by its beauty and complexity, and study it and learn from it. Also, besides observing it, never forget to take care of it.”

These words have forever impacted my way of seeing and living my life.

The memories that I keep closest to my heart are those we made when we visited her little observatory.

At her house, she built the first private observatory in Panama City, Panama. She had a 7.5-inch Astro-Physics apochromatic refractor and a 14-inch Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain. (In simple words, she had her own telescopes.)

As soon as I took the stairs to her observatory I always felt a combination of emotions. I was excited but I was nervous at the same time.

She would touch a button and the observatory’s roof will start to disappear. At this moment, my heart would skip a beat. I intensely loved this. I really did.

She would take some minutes, that felt like hours, to set the telescope for me.

The worst feeling was when we could not see anything. Immediately, we would head back to her studio feeling extremely disappointed at how society’s pollution and amount of city lights had taken away our right of observing the beauty of the night sky.

However, whenever we did have the opportunity of seeing something. It was a breathtaking experience.

I was little, so I only vividly remember one time I saw a planet.

I observed Saturn, hence the reason it's my favorite planet.

I don’t even have the words to describe what I felt that night. I had studied the planets and I knew about their existence – nonetheless, to actually see them was an absolutely distinctive experience.

It was perfect.

The sandy-orange sphere was perfectly round. And its ring was perfect too. As a whole, the view was remarkable.

“How can it be so perfect, Abuelita?” I said.

“That is exactly what I ask myself about the universe every single day,” she replied instantly.

My grandmother passed away my first semester as a freshman. Although I couldn’t attend her funeral because I was already living in the United States, I wrote these words:

I learned life’s most important lessons sitting at my abuelita Marichu’s lap.

As much as I knew before all my classmates that astronomers had discovered new comets and stars, the lessons that I learned from her extended well beyond the facts.

Looking at the sky, my grandmother taught me that every single day and night is unique. She told me that people usually do not acknowledge it because they are immersed in life’s daily routine.

Looking at the Moon, my grandmother taught me that there are human’s footprints up there. She told me that getting to that satellite means only one thing: people are capable of doing wonderful things.

Looking at the stars, my grandmother taught me that the universe is immense and that it holds more than a hundred thousand stars. She told me that humans, similar to stars, are simply a dot in this universe’s lifespan. She said, “We are pretty small and our time on Earth is very short, but, so are stars, and look how bright they shine while they can.”

Looking at the Sun, my grandmother taught me that even if the night arrives and the sky gets dark, the Sun will always rise — it will rise no matter what.

I am proud to be able to say that I had a grandmother whose knowledge was immense. She was intelligent in every sense of that word.

Because of her, I learned that we have only got one life so we have to live it to the fullest: loving our loved ones, being passionate about every single thing we do, and being grateful for the life that we have and the beautiful world we live in.

Looking at my grandmother, I learned that there are people who come into the world: they study it, love it, impact it, and when it is time for them to go, they leave it better than it was when they were born.

It took me more than a year to realize that she did not leave this universe; she just became what she always wanted to be.

Last night I missed her, so I went outside and stared at the night sky.

She is those stars shining back at me.