A grandparent played by his granddaughter

Well, I’m at the end of another grandparenting week. It was fun, and a lot easier than before. Perhaps I’m getting better at it, perhaps the grandkids are. 

Maybe both.

In any case, I said ‘easier’. That’s not the same as ‘easy’. It’s still a tricky business.

Let’s start with Matilda. She’s still nearly half a year away from her third birthday. That means she’s still two, the age, I now realise, that marks the real transition between baby and young child. ‘Terrible twos’ the English say, and now I understand more clearly the special reason why.

Matilda setting new fashion trends
What are curtains for, if you don’t wear them?

Way back in the sixteenth century, the French poet Joachim du Bellay described the man who would, in his view, fulfil his ideal of a poet in the French language.

“The man who will truly be the poet I am seeking in our language, will fill me with indignation, calm, delight, pain, love, hate, admiration, astonishment, in short, will hold the reins of my emotions, turning me here and there as he wishes.”

I’ve got news for him. To do all those things, you don’t need a poet of the French language. You just need a clever two-year old who’s trying out her emotional muscles. And Matilda doesn’t need the French language, or any other, to do it. Like a great many children being brought up in a bilingual environment – English at home and Spanish at school – it’s taking her a little longer for her to get going fully in either, though that barely limits her capacity to communicate her views and desires.

One of the desires that dominated this week was watching a show called CocoMelon. Apparently, it’s the world’s second most watched YouTube channel. It sometimes felt like that status owed quite a bit to Matilda.

And when it comes, Du-Bellay-like, to playing on her grandfather’s emotions as though they were her personal instrument, she’s emerging as an expert. You want poetry? There’s pure poetry in the power she deploys and how she deploys it. 

She can push me away one moment and the next climb on my knees for a cuddle. She can demand that I take her out for a walk one day, leading me with complete determination to some of her favourite places – the bakery where they give her free breadsticks, the supermarket where she gets a kick out of riding the lift from street level down to that of the main entrance (pressing the buttons herself, of course) – while the next day she snatches her coat out of my hand to get her Mum to help her on with it instead. But then, in a new contrast, I even got a kiss, leaving me completely confused.

An aperitivo after our walk
Note the free breadsticks

What I’m not confused about is who’s in charge. She’s a dominant figure even though she barely reaches my waist. It’s impressive how she pulls that off.

Matilda taking charge of our walk

Dealing with her brother Elliott, who’s now less than a month from his first birthday (and a rather higher one of his grandmother’s, on the same day – yes, he’s the kid who managed to time his birth to share her birthday). He’s taken to saying ‘dad-dad-dad-dad”. Matilda used to call me “dad-dad”, though these days she opts more decidedly for granddad. Now, instead, it’s Elliott I can sometimes convince myself is saying “dad-dad”, though in reality I suspect I’m out by a generation. 

Anyway, Elliott hasn’t yet reached the stage where he starts playing on my emotions like a skilled harpist with a yielding instrument. That’s probably still over a year away. No more than that, however, if Matilda’s example’s anything to go by.

What big eyes you have, Elliott
All the better for surveying the world

For now, he’s still in that glorious state where he’s mostly either coolly observing the world around him or beaming his smile on anyone who cares to make eye contact with him. It makes taking him for walks, with him sat in the buggy facing me, a particularly rewarding experience, as we regularly smile at each other.

Of course, he does also cry from time to time. Mostly it’s if something unfortunate happens, like a clash of heads with his sister, or an attempt on my part to put him in his buggy for the return trip from school, if I’ve failed to make clear that he will receive a piece of bread the very moment he’s settled. Frankly, I’m astonished anyway by his satisfaction with a piece of dry bread, a part of the charming character that makes him (relatively) low maintenance.

That ‘relatively’ is because of the other circumstance that causes him to cry, and that’s when people try to inflict on him the wholly unreasonable demand that he sleep when he chooses to be awake. It’s frustrating that people can’t grasp that 2:00 in the morning is a perfectly good time for a little human interaction, and frustration is something he expresses in loud objections. 

The other thing that makes him cry, but only briefly, I’m glad to say, is a consequence of one area of remarkable progress he’s achieved. He was walking before he hit ten months, and he’s running now. This can sometimes lead to mishaps, like when he went down onto his nose on a gravelly basketball court. That left him with some fine scars, which reminded me of my own childhood, during which whole years passed – perhaps from age six to age eleven – when my knees and elbows were never free of scabs.

Elliott charms with his smile when we make eye contact
Note the traces of his mishap on the basketball court

Elliott doesn’t cry for long when this kind of thing happens. He’s far too busy preparing to run towards his next objective. Life’s clearly too short for crying over spilled milk. Or grazed noses.

Just for the record, Elliott didn’t score a basket while suffering his accident. But then it probably didn’t help that he lacks the strength to shoot the ball. Or, quite frankly, even to lift it.

More worrying, his mother couldn’t put the ball in the hoop either. She doesn’t have his excuse. Though, to be honest, I wasn’t there so wasn’t put to the test – I doubt I’d have done any better.

Anyway, it was an exciting week. Mostly with those two, so in a good way. Not so hot when I had to spend a night in hospital in the middle of the stay, but I’m glad to say that I was picking them up from school again within hours of being discharged from my bed of boredom. 

I’m looking forward to my next visit. To see what new abilities Elliott has developed. And how Matilda has further honed her skill at playing on my emotions as though she were deftly plucking a stringed instrument.

Even Elliott accepts there are times for a sleep
And a granddad's chest's no bad place for one