'Seeing the world through the eyes of a child: The joy and privilege of being a grandparent'

Mick Le Moignan

By Mick Le Moignan

It’s ironic, as well as tragic, that the Covid-19 pandemic has been so closely followed by the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine.

For those of us fortunate enough to be able to walk out of our houses without being bombarded by shells, rockets and artillery fire, the aftermath of the pandemic is like a post-war period of recovery and readjustment. ‘Getting back to normal’ is the way we fondly describe it, but that may be wishful thinking. It’s probably more a matter of moving on to a new unknown.

For me, the release from the hermit kingdom of Oz after almost three years of confinement has been made even more joyful by meeting the new members of my family who have arrived in the interim. I was surprised to realise how sad I was to part from my four-month-old grandson in America after just ten days of getting to know each other.

We bonded through a long road trip, holding hands (well, a little finger in my case) in the back of the car. After depositing us at the airport for our flight to the UK, my daughter sent a touching video of young Theo reaching out his hand for a grandfatherly finger of comfort that was mysteriously no longer there. We who are not busy fighting for our lives have the luxury of indulging such tender emotions.

My parents wrote each other over 1,500 letters over a four-year forced parting in the Second World War – all numbered chronologically, so they could follow the sequence.

Hand-written letters barely exist, for the current generation – they regard emails as slow, outdated technology – but to me, there is something magical about the idea of nurturing a love affair in isolation, with only the written words of the beloved for company.

Our arrival in Brighton brought a first meeting with another grandchild – actually my step-grandson, but none the less adorable. I already knew 21-month-old Elliott, courtesy of WhatsApp video calls. I wondered if he might be taken aback to see me in the full-sized flesh.

I need not have worried. When we first met, at the end of his day in child-care, he gave me a searching look and pronounced firmly ‘Papa!’

My wife had already been to visit him in February, so he greeted her joyfully as ‘Granny’, stretched out a tiny hand to each of us and set out for the walk home between us, leaving his slightly bemused parents to follow in our wake.

Elliot has not yet developed a voluminous vocabulary, but he uses the words he does know to great effect. Over the next few days, he returned again and again to the ‘Oh, no!’, ‘Oh, yes’ game, which never failed to produce uproarious gales of laughter. As an American grandmother in South Georgia confided, ‘I’m just sorry they don’t stay that size!’

A friend once advised me that grandchildren are like London buses: you wait ages for one to come along, then three arrive together. Sure enough, more grandparental joys were in store, with the arrival on 20 June of my first granddaughter, Lily.

Girls are something of a rarity in our branch of the family: only three were born in the 20th century, with eight boys, so Lily’s arrival was a rare and special event.

The role of expectant grandparent is curiously undemanding. There is very little to do, apart from uttering a few unconvincing words of reassurance. Faced with the perennial miracle of birth, we all have to accept the limits of our powers.

It is one of those times when even non-believers are tempted to pray that ‘everything will be all right’. We know it usually is; there are no particular grounds for concern; but still, this is literally a ‘life and death situation’ and there is nothing one can do, except wait patiently and keep out of the way.

Those tiny children that we brought into the world, some decades ago, are finally on their own. It’s not that they don’t need us or care about us: there is just nothing more we can do to help them. So we try to occupy ourselves, to think about something else, anything else – but our thoughts keep returning to that hospital ward: surely, labour doesn’t last this long. Why is there no phone call? Has something gone wrong?

In the end, of course, for 99% of us, the news arrives that mother and baby are doing well and there are smiles and tears and celebrations and congratulations and photographs and video of the new arrival, thrust into the limelight, moments after birth.

Following the nesting instinct that I observed in myself, as a first-time parent, long ago, my elder son and his wife moved into their new house in south-west London just three days before the birth – and were back at home as a newly-minted family less than 24 hours after Lily’s arrival.

Becoming a grandparent prompts a reassessment of one’s own grandparents. For the first time, you have an insight into their thoughts and feelings – and regret not understanding them better at the time.

First, of course, it is a huge privilege to have an insight into the future of your family – but there are more questions than answers. It’s lovely to meet the children, but I want to know the adults they will become: what will interest them, what values and skills will they have, what jobs will they do? Will they have children of their own?

We live our lives under the illusion that we are individuals, possessed of free will, but we are really just links in a chain; we are allowed glimpses of the lives of our immediate predecessors and our immediate descendants, but a veil is drawn over the rest of our line.

Like the men and women fighting for their land and their lives in Ukraine, we can only do our duty, according to our beliefs, and hope for the best – but hope, like life, springs eternal.

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