More grandparenting chronicles, with scenes of celebration and exhaustion

With kiddie seats in the car, Danielle and I can’t both travel to the station to pick up our grandkids and one of their parents. So when they joined us for a brief visit last week, I stayed at home while Danielle went to fetch them. On their arrival, Elliott, eager two-and-a-half-year-old that he is, rang the bell rather than wait for a key, and I came out to let them in.

As I approached, I could see him on the other side of the gate.

‘Grandad, granddad, granddad,’ he was chanting while jumping up and down.

Now I don’t have much of a fan club. So it’s good to find one, even if it only has a single member. In any case, if that single member is Elliott, he makes up in enthusiasm and volume for the lack of anyone else celebrating with him.

It amazes me slightly. I’m not aware of having done anything special to excite his admiration. But, hey, I’m certainly not the one to question any unqualified enthusiasm for me.

Enjoy it while you can is my attitude.

So at the gate, I responded to Elliott’s greeting by jumping up and down myself, and chanting, ‘Elly-Belly, Elly-Belly, Elly-Belly’. The others just had to stand around in the street watching our weird behaviour. Once I’d opened the gate, Elliott and I sealed our mutual approval by a fully reciprocated hug.

Part of my charm for Elliott, it turns out, is my apparent willingness to carry him on my shoulders. I say ‘apparent’ because neither of the grandkids is quite the featherweight they were some time ago. Once up there, they seldom show any inclination to get back down, and the effect, not just on my shoulders but also on my back does, eventually, become rather more than I can stand.

That slightly limits my enthusiasm for this pastime, but I try to hide it.

Mode of transport of choice
while enjoying Valencia's Christmas lights

This shoulder-riding business is, by the way, the area in which Elliott most resembles our smaller dog, Toffee. She has a thing about not being made to walk too far. ‘Too far’ in this context can mean a minute or so after leaving our garden. When she feels she’s had enough, she’ll start jumping up and pushing her nose against my leg. Even without words, it’s clear she’s saying, ‘pick me up, pick me up, pick me up’. She does it to me because she’s identified me as a soft touch.

Elliott doesn’t jump up or push his nose into my leg. He just stops in front of me, back to my knees, holds up his hands and informs me, ‘I want to go on your shoulders’. Actually, I think he says, ‘me want to go on your doulders’ but, while I sometimes find it hard to understand what he’s saying, I can’t pretend there’s anything unclear about this message. So up onto my shoulders – or possibly doulders – he goes.

I do this with some dread. Partly because I know it’ll be quite exhausting enough. Partly because I know that at some stage Matilda, who weighs significantly more than Elliott, will be demanding her turn.

Matilda is living proof of a principle of genetics of which I was previously unaware. Her mother, Sheena, is rightly famed for her enthusiasm for long country walks. That’s ‘enthusiasm’ in the broad sense, that runs from total commitment at one end of the scale, to deliberate and sustained procrastination at the other. Without wanting to be critical of a daughter-in-law of whom I’m as fond as I am of Matilda and Elliott, this chronicler’s total attachment to the truth prevents me hiding the fact that Sheena is not at all at the ‘total commitment’ end of the range.

Matilda strides out in style

Elliott training with his sticks

Matilda seems to have inherited all Sheena’s attachment to walks.  So though the kids couldn’t wait to try out their Christmas presents, consisting of their first hiking boots and Nordic Walking sticks, once they’d covered a few hundred metres, she loudly proclaimed her exhaustion. Both she and Elliott now decided it was time I made doulders available to ride on, to avoid over-tiring their legs.

Recovery. And restoration.

Up came Elliott until, once I was reaching the end of my tether, Matilda demanded that I carry her. Committed as I am to complete fairness, I lowered Elliott to the ground (over his objections) and took Matilda instead.

Mode of transport of choice
after a strenuous hike

I coped, if with difficulty, up to the last, steep climb back to the car. Then I lifted her down, much to her annoyance, which I was only able to overcome by adapting the ‘Push-push-push-push’ game I’ve described once before. Normally, this involves a child sitting on a bike while I push him (I say him because it had always been Elliott before) while singing, to the tune of Twinkle, twinkle, little star, ‘push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-push-Elly-push-push’.

Matilda was walking rather than on a bike, but I pushed her up the last slope of the path, singing that same sophisticated song, with its complex lyrics, substituting ‘Tilly’ for ‘Elly’. That was so successful that Elliott insisted on my going back down to the bottom of the slope and doing the same with him. ‘Elly’ replaced ‘Tilly’ in the lyrics, but the success was exactly the same.

Talking about Matilda, on the last day of their stay, she asked for her special drinking bottle, the one with lots of twisty, spiral bits and a plastic straw incorporated into the structure itself. We bought it for her at the zoo during a visit by the grandkids some months ago. Then it was filled with some sticky drink that claimed to have the flavour of a fruit though I suspected it had never been anywhere near a fruit or anything else that healthy. Unfortunately, the quality of manufacture of these things is very much on a par with the quality of the contents.

‘I’m sorry, Matilda,’ I told her, ‘it broke and we had to throw it out.’

She pondered this for a moment.

‘That’s a little bit sad, you know,’ she told me eventually, solemnly and perhaps a little reproachfully.

A truthful response seemed the most appropriate.

‘I know,’ I told her, ‘but that’s life, I’m afraid. Things wear out and sometimes they break. That’s sad, you’re right, but it’s just the way things are.’

She contemplated this response, seemed to accept it, and nodded.

‘We can always get another one,’ I assured her, ‘we haven’t been to the zoo for a while, so we can go again next time you come.’

She nodded again.

‘But I choose the flavour of the drink,’ she stipulated.

That was an easy condition to grant. I assured her that I wouldn’t dream of having anyone other than herself choose the flavour of her drink. Apparently satisfied with our conversation, she moved off to find a more entertaining way to pass the time.

Incidentally, Matilda had an important triumph during this stay. On the way out to the walk that had involved my using my ‘push-push’ song, and on the way back, she sat in the car with Toffee on her lap. The kids and the dogs haven’t always seen entirely eye-to-eye, concerning such matters as fur pulling on the one side, and growling on the other. So the fact that she’s now big enough and mature enough to sit with Toffee on her lap, stroking her the way a poodle likes, may be a small step for mankind (and even dogkind), but it’s a leap forward for the two of them.

Elliott’s just as keen on the dogs. But he hasn’t quite learned to bridle his enthusiasm to the point that he treats them with the gentleness they require.

Of course, with me, he’s fully entitled to give free rein to his enthusiasm, unbridled and unlimited. I have no objection at all. Indeed, I welcome it.