Playgrounds on my mind. Or the strange experience of vicarious grandparenting

Elliott: young but already a connoisseur
of the finer things, like playgrounds

Remote grandparenting is a new experience to me. Perhaps I should say vicarious grandparenting. Because Danielle is in the hills above Madrid visiting Sheena and Nicky and our grandchildren (OK, OK, their children), Matilda and Elliott, while I stay at home.

Elliott and Matilda keeping Danielle entertained

This is because we’re doing a week a month each, in alternate months. Next month it’s my turn. For now, I just get updates from Danielle.

It seems, for instance, that Matilda’s hand’s getting better. And why did it need to get better? She got over-excited at the idea of helping making some porridge and received a rather harsh application of the lesson we all have to learn as children, that hot pots hurt.

Much more fun to drink from your hand at a public fountain
Note that she's wisely not using her poor bandaged right hand

Elliott too is getting better, but from a lot less painful experience. That’s the thing about schools: they’re perfect infection exchanges for children. Especially young ones who like getting close to each other, if not on top of each other, so if yours has just got over the infection he was suffering from last week, he’s practically bound to be playing with a kid who has a new one to pass on today.

Still, he’s back at school again now. I can never quite get over that. He’s still only ten months old. But in the village where he kindly shares his house with his parents, they start their schooling young. A good way, I reckon, to launch people on that lifelong learning experience that makes existence so enthralling.

Not, of course, that it’s all work and no play. There’s plenty of fun at their school. As Danielle pointed out to me after helping dress them both for carnival celebrations.

Dressed for carnival

School’s also a great way for kids to socialise. The way Danielle describes things, it’s practically impossible now for her to walk past a playground with Matilda without a sudden cry of ‘Lucía!’ or ‘María!’ or some other name. That means a stop at that playground, so that Matilda can try an exciting and entirely novel experience. She may be completely used to playing on all the swings and slides and seesaws of that playground. But they feel totally different when she can play on them with a friend.

And that’s even better when it’s not just a friend but multiple friends who are with her, especially if some of those friends are her uncle, or her ‘uncles’ and ‘aunts’.

So what’s the difference between an uncle without quotes and an ‘uncle’ with quotes? I’ve no idea whether Matilda and Elliott will adopt the same convention, but when I was a child all the adults my parents introduced me to were ‘uncles’ and ‘aunts’. The nice thing about the ones with quotes is that there are so many more of them. I mean, judge for yourselves: Matilda only has two uncles, and only one of them lives in Madrid. But she has lots of ‘uncles’ and ‘aunts’, at least three of whom came to see them a couple of days ago: ‘Uncle’ Jerome, ‘Uncle’ Alfie and ‘Auntie’ Emma.

Which was brilliant, since they revealed a capacity for playing around and making idiots of themselves far beyond anything she could have imagined. In a playground. 

Another intriguing enhancement to the playground delights.

Mum and Dad and Elliott and Matilda
And ‘Uncle’ Alfie

Elliott had just as much fun as she did. As you can see, while ‘Uncle’ Alfie was having trouble maintaining his balance in the middle of the seesaw, Elliott was at one end enjoying the experience with Sheena, my daughter-in-law (OK, OK, his, and Matilda’s, mother), while Matilda was at the other with Nicky, my son (OK, OK, her, and Elliott’s, father).

The rather older kids also enjoyed the playground for themselves, proving that the inner child is always there, whatever your calendar age.

Dad (Nicky), ‘Uncle’ Alfie, ‘Auntie’ Emma and
Uncle Michael, proving that just because you’re
an adult doesn’t mean you have to stop being a kid

Anyway, one way or another, it sounds like a lot of fun is being had by all concerned. Extremely tiring fun – second to parenting, grandparenting is one of the most exhausting of occupations – but a lot of fun all the same. I’m looking forward to my turn next month.

In the meantime, I at least had a remote hug. That was when Matilda, instead of talking to me on a FaceTime call, flung her arms around the phone. That was remote grandparenting at its best.

Apart from that, I keep being reminded of good playground times when I walk past our fine, spanking new one. Which is just sitting here waiting for Matilda and Elliott to come back and enjoy it. “Where have you two got to?” it seems to be saying, “it’s lonely without you.”

Lovely and lonely: our nice, new local playground

I suspect it won’t have too long to wait.