I almost never saw some of my five grandparents because they lived very far from us, but they were still my grandparents. A person doesn’t have to be physically around to be a presence in a kid’s life; I knew they existed, and more to the point, they were an important presence to me because they sent me cash on my birthday and Xmas. (A $20 bill mattered deeply to me as a little kid who rarely got my own cash. We didn’t have regular phone calls or letters or anything like that, but $40 a year ensured that they kept significant space in my mind.)