Despatches from a mother who started late (and is running to catch up)

Granny footsteps

Here's a little-known advantage to having children later in life. One that's been under my nose for months, but that I've only now noticed. By accident, really. Revelation strikes on the way back from Waitrose. Around tea-time. After we miss our bus. The way these things so often do.

"So what's it like, mum, waiting till 67 to have your first grandchild?" I ask Granny.

The state Granny is in, I half-expect her to say: "Awful. I'm too old and knackered to run after a toddler. Couldn't you have got yourself a decent feller ten years ago?" Not that I in any way feel like this myself, you must understand.

I'm expecting this response because, after all, we've just left the supermarket. The same supermarket where last week she volunteered to go back and pay for a tub of half-fat fromage frais her seventeen-month grandaughter had somehow, a day earlier, managed to half-inch from the shelves, without Granny noticing, and hide in her buggy. When the offending item was discovered, to great consternation, Granny insisted on returning to the scene of the crime to confess and pay up. So important to instill honesty early.....

Granny's finger is bleeding from a fumbled attempt to strap Beanie into her chariot. Flustered fingers, the arched back of protest, a nippy buckle....

She is also carrying two bags of my shopping (let me just say here I am carrying the other two and pushing the buggy, lest you conclude I'm a complete slacker). Her face is lopsided after a trip to the dentist to remove one of her last four remaining teeth. The rest go next week: it's a poignant time. And she is perspiring in the sunshine with her efforts.

But she doesn't say what I expected. She doesn't even hesitate.

"Brrrrrrilliant!"

She becomes more Yorkshire in emphasis. Her ruddy face and terrible teeth crack into a huge smile.

"It would have been just the same if it had happened ten years ago, mind."

Then she stops, corrects herself.

"No, it wouldn't have been as good ten years ago. I wouldn't have been retired and able to spend all this time with you and Beanie."

It's unimaginable. If Granny were still working, Beanie would never have met all the biscuit-buying old ladies in the supermarket who greet her like an old friend. She wouldn't have all the love and attention of her granny, a lady for whom the word 'besotted' barely describes the intensity of her love for Beanie. No getting to rampage around Granny's garden, enjoying the honeysuckle, no entertaining hours spent unloading and loading the contents of Granny's handbag onto the kitchen floor... the thought of Granny unavailable for larks and jollity is grim; grim in the extreme.

As for me, how would I have got through the long days of caring for Beanie on my own? I know lots of women do. But communication can be tough with someone whose only phrases are 'neh, neh, neh", "ping" and "bah-bah". Don't get me wrong; I adore Beanie, I'm so proud of her. She has an excellent sense of fun, she's loving and outgoing. My love for her is huge and overwhelming. I feel I'd give my life for her if need be. She's the most amazing, precious thing ever to happen to me. Sometimes, though, it just lightens the load to have another person there, to keep an eye out for her while I do boring domestic stuff, make her feel special and loved.

Granny has taken to being a grandmother with such glee and good grace, she even consented to read a book I bought her, The Good Granny Guide by Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall, accepting it with scarcely more than a grumpy 'hrummph' sound in mild protest that suggested one as experienced as she could have no need of such advice. And she acts on some of the suggestions too. Greater love hath no granny than this; to read something suspiciously close to the self-help books her generation disdains, to accept advice from a stranger on the business of how to be her.

Posted 06 September 2007 20:56

Childcare Granny Older mother

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