Grandparenting: the Easter visit

Fully grasping the role of grandparents has taken me a while (I’m a slow learner). And in any case, it may just be the role of these grandparents. Or, if I’m strictly honest, perhaps only the role of this grandfather.

What I discovered, while the grandkids were with us (with their parents) over the Easter break, is that parents are there to establish standards of acceptable (and above all safe) living, and to inculcate some good, sensible habits in their children. My role, on the other hand, is to undermine all that systematically. Why systematically? Because in childcare, nothing matters so much as consistency.

Sheena, our daughter-in-law, has established the intelligent rule that bikes and scooters are not to be used indoors. I find it quite funny to see them zapping around the place, so on my watch that injunction is recognised but not observed. 

“In Mamama’s and Granddad’s house, there are no rules,” Sheena says. 

In case you’re wondering where ‘Mamama’ comes from, that’s the affectionate name for a Grandma in Danielle’s home region of Eastern France. 

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that conditions in our place are quite as anarchic as Sheena suggests. Perhaps just a tad more chaotic than in their home. But a lot of fun, in my view.

One of the better bits of chaos, if I say so myself, and I say so myself because I’m far from convinced anyone else would say it, involved what we (grandparents and the grandkids) decided to call ‘rain’. I should make clear that what most people call rain, water falling out of the sky, has been absent from around here so long that it’s becoming little more than a fond memory. 

The rain we enjoyed with the kids came out of a hosepipe.

Matilda acting as rainmaker for Elliott and Mamama

The idea was born when Matilda decided that she wanted to play with an umbrella. One with a fine union jack design. It’s not clear why we have such a thing, particularly since for some years now I’ve been anything but proud of the behaviour of the nation to which I belong (and which I’ve left behind to live in Spain). What’s certain is that an umbrella, especially a proudly British umbrella, is incomplete without that essential British phenomenon, almost an icon of Britishness, rain.

Well, the specifically British type would be drizzle, but unfortunately our hose doesn’t have a ‘drizzle’ setting.

Elliott’s turn to be rainmaker for Matilda

In any case, we had a wonderful time, with the umbrella sheltering various people from the ‘rain’ at various times. When it comes to maverick grandparenting behaviour, I think that was one of the better manifestations of our maverickness. Or should that be maverickity?

We did plenty of other things, of course. 

We went to a great local playground. There’s one piece of equipment the kids particularly like, where they climb up high and then crawl through tunnels and up and down ramps. At the end, though, there’s a drop of a metre and a half or so. There’s a rope they can use but, at three, Matilda’s still just a tad young to handle it. It was a delight to see that some ‘big girls’ and at least one ‘big boy’ (‘big’ as in six or seven) were always on hand to help her.

Helping hand for Matilda

There were even two beach trips, this being Valencia, and the sea being just a twenty-minute drive away. They were fun too, even though it was just a tad cooler, in April, than we might have preferred. A beach visit, it seems to me, is only really a beach visit if the sand’s too hot to walk on. The kids eventually got cold.

Still, before that happened, they had plenty of time to enjoy themselves. Elliott, it turns out, is determined to get rid of the beach entirely, by carrying the sand, spadeful by spadeful, down to the sea and throwing it in. This time, in a reversal of the normal order, it was Matilda who followed his lead, and started doing the same thing as Elliott. 

Elliott removing the sand

Matilda throwing her weight into the effort

That made me think of Lewis Carroll, and The Walrus and the Carpenter poem from Through the Looking Glass, the second Alice book. You know the bit:

The Walrus and the Carpenter
      Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
      Such quantities of sand:
“If this were only cleared away,”
      They said, “it would be grand!”

“If seven maids with seven mops
      Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
      “That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it”, said the Carpenter,
      And shed a bitter tear.

I felt it would have been tactless to tell Elliott this, but I rather think that the Carpenter would have been justified in shedding a bitter tear over his efforts too. What seven maids couldn’t do in seven months, it quickly became clear he wasn’t going to be able to pull off in seven minutes. But that didn’t stop either of them having fun trying.

Fortunately, one of the advantages of there being so much sand is that they could get themselves buried in it. Matilda first, because she remembered how much fun that had been last year. 

Matilda pulling up the covers in her beach bed

And Elliott second, because he doesn’t like being left behind. 

Elliott fed up with this passive role

Incidentally, I put his rapid progress, first in walking (these days, running) and then in speech, down to his desire not to be left behind. That worked well for us back at home, too, when I decided to clean up some footprints on the sitting room floor, and found that Elliott wanted to do the mopping, with Matilda keen to assist.

Elliott helping Granddad

Teamwork

It was great to see Elliott being so helpful. It certainly added another aspect to his charm. Not, of course, that the charm is always on display. I remain bedazzled by his remarkable character, the strong silent one. Every now and then, though, when tired or hungry, he seems to let the strong bit grow while the silent part gets kicked into the long grass. Super-strong and super-audible, you’d have to say.

“He’s lovely,” I told Danielle, “except when he’s a real pain in the arse.”

“Yes,” said Danielle, “but where do you think he gets that from?”

“You’re not suggesting,” I wondered, “that his pain-in-the-arsery comes from his granddad, are you?”

Danielle’s a bit of a strong silent type too, so though she didn’t use any actual words, her reply was eloquent.

Elliott: a lot of charm, enhanced rather than limited 
by a touch of devilry

The suggestion that my genes communicated Elliott’s get-up-our-nosery to him strikes me as a little cruel. Though, I have to admit, it’s probably accurate. Especially when I look at my son Nicky, who no doubt transmitted them to him.

Anyway, both kids kept us well amused. Including in our seasonal celebration. Easter being Easter, a feast with about as much religious content left in it as Halloween, there had to be chocolate eggs and rabbits and, apparently, even toys. That was a fine opportunity for further undermining of parental good sense and discipline, this time as concerns excessive consumption of sweetmeats. Mamama did an impressive job of sabotaging all that.

She hid the chocolates and the toys in the woods, where the kids had to go hunting for them, watched by adults who, naturally, weren’t there to provide any help. Perhaps at most little hints, such as “I wonder whether that might be a path worth going up?” or “why don’t we have a look at the hole in that tree’s trunk?”

Triumph in the Easter Egg hunt

All the discoveries were quickly made, with as much delight as Christopher Columbus no doubt felt over his own, and with far less damage to the natives.

Satisfaction

The next day was the last of their stay, but it had its stock of incidents too. The best was a visit to our local playground with Martín, the son of some of our most-loved neighbours. He and Matilda have really hit it off.

Which has given me what I think is the perfect photo to end this post.

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