Summer grandparenting: penguins, fish and dragons

We’d been talking about penguins, Elliott and I, as one does when breakfasting with a four-year-old.

‘And you know,’ he solemnly announced, ‘they live near the North Pole.’

‘Near the pole,’ I agreed, but adding a gentle correction, ‘but the South Pole. There are no penguins near the North Pole.’

‘Oh, yes, there are.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I continued, as gently as I could.

‘Have you been to the North Pole?’ he countered.

He’d spotted the weakness in my argument.

‘No,’ I admitted, but then added, ‘Have you?’ 

I’d found the weakness in his.

‘Yes,’ he assured me, putting paid to my trivial objection, ‘for my birthday.’

Well, what could I say? It wasn’t, after all, completely inconceivable that his parents had taken Elliott to the Arctic for his birthday. Unlikely, it’s true, but not beyond the wildest of assumptions. After all, his parents like to make his birthdays special, and what could be more spectacular than a polar expedition as a celebration of turning four? And if he’d been there and seen penguins, I’d look pretty damn silly to be denying their existence, wouldn’t I? Empirical experience trumps learned belief. 

It’s true that discovering penguins in the Arctic would strike a serious blow to the beliefs of ornithologists, but why should we care for ornithology anyway? It’s all for the birds, I reckon.

This illuminating conversation took place at our home near Valencia, and during the third grandparenting session of the summer. 

First Matilda had come on her own. Well, perhaps I should say stayed with us on her own. I took a train to Madrid, collected her from her dad at the station, and travelled straight back to Valencia. At the end of the stay, her mother did the reverse, jumping on a train to Valencia’s main station, and travelling straight back with Matilda. It may sound like a painful waste of time, nearly four hours in trains with barely a pause at the destination, but Sheena and I agree that it’s a glorious way to get a rest and do a little reading.

Trains are the luxury form of travel of our era.

Less luxurious, it turns out, were the sleeping arrangements for Matilda. We’d decided to replace the old sofa bed which converted into two single beds for her and her brother. It wasn’t a particularly good sofa and, it turned out, it wasn’t a particularly good pair of beds either: it coped badly with three or four years’ use by young kids. That, I suspect, was at least in part due to its not being even adjacent to the top of the range from Ikea.

So we got a new one from further up the Ikea range. It’s a much better sofa. Sadly, as a bed it wasn’t half as successful. At least, not initially. It converts into a bed by lowering a hinged back to join the sofa seat, but of course it doesn’t join seamlessly. There’s a bit of a gap between the two, and Matilda made it clear that she was less than pleased with this new arrangement.

‘My old bed,’ she told us sadly, ‘was a winner.’

By contrast, the new one, with the gap down the middle, was a loser. 

The solution? A memory foam mattress that we lay across the bed to cover and neutralise the gap. And the reaction from Matilda? None at all. Which is excellent. No news is good news and no complaints means a satisfied granddaughter.

There are things that grandparents – well, grownups generally – say that they should perhaps learn to stop saying. I remember when I was a kid I loathed it when people asked me ‘shall I keep you here? Shall we send your parents home and you stay with me?’ I never knew what to reply to a suggestion that ludicrous.

Less ludicrous but perhaps not less futile are the questions that probe affection.

‘Who loves Matilda?’ Danielle asked.

‘Mamama and Granddad,’ Matilda immediately replied, correctly identifying Danielle and me, in that order.

‘And who loves Mamama and Granddad?’ Danielle pressed on, asking one more question than necessary and opening the door to a potentially regrettable response.

‘Elliott,’ said Matilda, providing one. 

Following her solo visit in June, Matilda was back the following month with the whole family. It was damn hot. But Elliott had no problem about pursuing the unconventional solution, demonstrating to us all what the elegant young man wears to breakfast in hot weather.

Elliott well-dressed for summer

He also showed us a fine way to spend the time in such conditions.

In the summer, just chill

Not that resting was an activity for him alone. He and his sister were both occasionally exhausted enough to need some recovery time.

Recovery time

What put them in this state was, above all, the pool. This was the summer for swimming. The pool we share with our neighbours offers two equal pleasures: meeting friends when they’re there, or ‘having the pool to ourselves’ as Matilda would put it, every time we arrived to find that they weren’t.

It's been a summer of rapid progress. In June, Matilda wasn’t yet ready to get rid of her aids – flotation vest or mask – but by July she was striking out without them and on this, the latest visit in August, when the two of them came with just their Dad, she’s been swimming full widths of the pool unaided. She’s even jumping in with complete confidence and without having anyone to hold her hand or catch her in the water. She hasn’t quite reached the stage of swimming a length – she still has to overcome her fear of the deep end – but that’ll come soon.

And just yesterday, as I write these words, Elliott too passed a new milestone. Without aids, he swam between his Dad and me, repeatedly. There are some small technical matters to overcome – like trying to get his body horizontal in the water instead of staying vertical with his nose just above the surface – but he was afloat and, most of the time, moving towards a goal.

They may not be quite ready to rival the fish, but they’re both on the way.

No wonder they got tired. But at least they could relax whenever they felt like it, watching their new favourite series, all about Vikings who tame dragons and have wonderful adventures with them. Truly relaxing, since each episode seems to follow exactly the same structure as every other – humans and dragons go somewhere that proves less safe than they think and find themselves battling with nasty villains, or the nasty villains come after them even when they stay at home – things go badly wrong until it looks as though disaster is unavoidable – and then, to our ever-repeated astonishment, things all work out just fine after all. Immensely enjoyable. 

Apparently.

So it’s been a summer of successful visits all around. With much to remember them by. Though, to be absolutely fair, I’m still not convinced that there are penguins at the North Pole.

I mean, I checked with ChatGPT which assures me there are none. But, hey, which is a more reliable source of information? Today’s halfbaked Artificial Intelligence or the natural intelligence of a four-year-old grandkid?

It’s a tossup, I’d say.

And another rite of passage:

Matilda dumping her milk teeth