My grandmother has been visiting the states from Iran for some months now. She spent some time with her eldest daughter, then spent some time with her eldest son, and is rounding out her trip with some time with her youngest son, my dad. When my grandmother is in town, it's an excuse for many things; it's an excuse for all my favorite Persian foods to be cooked, foods we never get to eat because they're reserved for special occasions like this one. It's an excuse to get gifts for no apparent reason, for our family to get together every week, for my mom to make pancakes every day for breakfast, for our entire extended family to take trips together to show my grandmother around.

And it's also an excuse for grandmotherly advice, whether it's wanted or not.

Luckily, my grandmother is chock full of wisdom. She's lived a very long time, in very different places, in a completely different era. She raised four kids almost on her own because my grandfather was an important man in the military in Iran and was often traveling or working away from home. She secured four marriages for her children to very prominent and wealthy families across the country, and then she singlehandedly picked up her family and moved them from a country that was suddenly too dangerous for them to live in, and brought them all to the United States and started over nearly from scratch. So as you can imagine, she's the wisest person you'll ever meet. And she spreads that wisdom on the daily.

I won't detail every tidbit she's ever given me over breakfast, or at a family gathering, because I'll be here all day and this article would be tens of thousands of words long. But she did say something to me recently that's stuck with me, and I can't get it out of my head.

She asked me, one day, why I thought she loved her grandchildren so much, even more than her own children. I said I had no idea because I don't have children or grandchildren of my own. So she told me that a grandmother will always love her grandchildren more than any of her children because the enemy of her enemy is her friend.

I'm sure you're scratching your head right now trying to dissect this very strange sentiment, and so did I. But she explained it like this: a mother will love her child no matter what, even if that child sets her mother on fire and throws her ashes to the dogs, that mother will die loving that child. And because of that love, that fierce and undying love, a child is clearly a mother's worst enemy. That child holds her mother's life in her hands and could throw it away with a careless word, a careless gesture. So a child is a nature enemy to its mother. However, when that child has their own child, the same cycle repeats. Now, the child that was once a child is a child no more; she is a mother now, with a child of her own. And that child is just as wild, just as hurtful as she was. So now the mother that is now a grandmother has a natural ally. Because in her grandchild, the grandmother finally has her revenge; she finally has an ally who can hurt her child as much as her child has hurt her.

Now if you're like me, you read this story and thought to yourself: this is the most pessimistic and nihilistic thing I've ever read, clearly, this woman hates her own children. Until you sit back and think about it, and realize maybe my grandma has a point. I would never DREAM of speaking to my grandmother the way I speak to my parents; and why would I want to? I have no need. My grandmother has the perfect child in me; a child that she did not give birth to, but loves her as much as she loves her parents. And because she's not my mother, she doesn't need to discipline me or watch me or make sure I'm on the right path. She's free to mother me without being my mother; she can keep all the good parts of parenting while getting rid of the bad parts.

Now, I'm sure my grandmother doesn't consider her children her enemy, and she loves them as much as they love her. But maybe she has a point; that my cousins and I are her allies in this weird and complicated dynamic we call a family. It's worth considering a different perspective to get a fresh impression of something we consider solid.