Non-Christmas grandparenting

Christmas is about kids. That’s a commonplace. In our case, that means grandkids. 

In our home, Christmas was for Matilda and Elliott

Not that they actually came to us at Christmas. Here in Spain, there are two important days: Christmas (though Christmas Eve matters rather more than the day itself) and the feast of the kings, 12 days later on 6 January. The grandkids’ parents, Nicky and Sheena, organised things brilliantly, showing up on the 27th of December, two days after Christmas, and leaving on the 6th of January, so we avoided any of the formal Christmas festivities and instead made our own fun on the days we wanted. I took to that particularly well, since my mother, though Jewish, always insisted on celebrating Christmas, and specifically Christmas day. That was a real pain as she wanted us to join her for a restaurant lunch, which is awful in Britain on the 25th of December, with practically everything shut. Non-Christmas celebrations are easier and, by that token, far pleasanter.

Michael, Nicky’s brother and our middle son, had been with us for some days before the others showed up. He and Danielle decided that we needed a Christmas tree for when the grandkids arrived. They popped out to buy one only to discover that the shop we usually go to had sold out. So they got – I should say, Michael got us, as a Christmas present – a tropical fig tree instead. Danielle decorated it just like she would have decorated a standard tree and, I have to say, I liked it as much as any traditional Christmas tree I've seen.

The beauty is that, now that the decorations have been removed, we can continue to enjoy the tree, as an actual tree. It’s a living, breathing, photosynthesising plant. You know the saying about a dog not being just for Christmas? It turns out our Christmas tree isn’t just for Christmas.

Not just for Christmas

Anyway, the curious Christmas tree was well received by the grandkids when they arrived. Though they both informed us with unanswerable firmness, “that’s not a Christmas tree”. Still, true Christmas tree or not, the presence of true Christmas presents underneath it guaranteed it a reception as enthusiastic as we could wished. As I’ve explained, it wasn’t either of the days when kids might receive gifts in Spain, but hey, who needs to fixate on the calendar if there are presents at stake?

Presents really enhance a tree

The presence of Uncle Michael – Michael Michael as they still occasionally call him – also added to their pleasure, so the holiday got off to a fine start.

My first trip out with either of the grandkids, which was on a day when Matilda felt under the weather and so Elliott was coming with me alone, I suggested we go for a ride on the metro. Well, I didn’t use the word ‘metro’. I offered him a ‘chu-chu-bahnele’ trip, since ‘chu-chu-bahnele’, based on the word ‘Bahn’ in Danielle’s Germanic mother tongue, the dialect of Alsace, is what she’s always called trains, with our kids and even with those of other families whose company we’ve had occasion to enjoy. 

Elliott in the chu-chu-bahnele

Of course, the moment Matilda heard that her brother was going on a chu-chu-bahnele, she experienced a miraculous and total recovery from her illness. By then though it was too late. Sheena pronounced from on high, like a High Court judge passing a heavy sentence, that someone who was too ill to do anything like exercise at 9:00, couldn’t possibly have recovered by 10:00. So when Elliott and I left the house, it was with Matilda’s protestations ringing in our ears.

Elliott had found a stick which he apparently felt attached to – at least, it remained attached to his hand all the way down to our local metro station. Said station is in the woods, though, and when we got there I suggested to Elliott that it wasn’t fair to take the stick on the train – sorry, chu-chu-bahnele – and we should throw it back among the trees where a whole lot of other sticks seemed to have congregated, doubtless ready to welcome it back as a long lost friend. Elliott agreed and the solemn ceremony went well, with appropriate expressions of farewell from both of us, as we threw the stick back beyond the tracks.

We then travelled a whole four stops (the perfect length of journey: just long enough to enjoy the pleasure, short enough not to get boring). That left us with only a brief walk (mercifully brief for my shoulders) to our favourite playground. It has a pond with ducks on it as well as the usual collection of swings and slides and climbing frames. Elliott went to great lengths – well, he ran a fairly great length – trying to make friends with a bunch of ducks that had come to shore. They, sadly, responded to his overtures less enthusiastically than he’d hoped.

Unapproachable ducks

But we had plenty of fun all the same. 

The kids also enjoyed playing hide and seek with us. I have to say, though, that I’m not sure that they’re quite as effective as they might like at hiding themselves.

Grandkids hidden?

Not so much, it seems

Matilda has become an expert at what I like to think of as a bum staircase descent. She likes occasionally to sit at the top of the staircase, and then slide down, step by step, on her bum. She seems to enjoy it, which I find curious, since I’m sure it would only leave me with a sore bum.

Bum descent

We’ve become connoisseurs of the various playgrounds within a short bike ride of us, and deepened our familiarity with them on several occasions during this visit. A bike ride followed by a time on swings or slides and then a bike ride home? It seems that’s pretty much an ideal way to spend a morning.

Matilda and Elliott enjoying a visit to the village next door

Our local playground is fun too

Danielle even had the kids working. Child labour, I believe, is somewhat frowned upon these days, but she thought they’d enjoy helping to spread new gravel in the garden where some gaps had opened in the gravel previously laid.

How does that happen, by the way? I mean, it’s not as though gravel evaporates, does it? So how come, after having carefully laid gravel evenly and, if I say so myself, aesthetically, a few months before, bare earth starts to peep through in various places? 

I’d understand it if there were corresponding areas where the gravel is piled up thick. However, I’ve never found any. So the whole thing just remains a mystery.

Hard at work

Anyway, the work went well for a good twenty minutes or so. At that point, the kids joined the ranks of the campaigners against child labour and downed tools. Danielle finished the job later, after they’d gone.

In any case, Elliott still seems to be much more interested in bringing small spadefuls of gravel from the garden and scattering them on the patio instead. That provides the stimulating sensation of walking on pointy bits of stone if ever we go out there in thin-soled footwear. It even introduces an element of exciting suspense as we discover whether we’re going to slip on what is, after all, an ideal skidding surface of loose stone on solid stone.

Even though Matilda and Elliott’s family was leaving on the Day of the Kings, we did manage to get one celebration of the feast in, the day before. This one followed the French tradition, with a special cake (our local bakery, Spanish to the core, does a great ‘galette des rois’, fully up to French standards). There’s a token baked into it which makes the person who finds it king or queen for the day, and this year it was Matilda who won that enviable honour.

Queen Matilda

Then there was the occasion when Elliott came to me with a stick in his hand. I explained to him that this must be the same stick that we’d thrown back amongst its friends at the metro station. It had, no doubt, enjoyed seeing them all again but ultimately decided that it was missing the boy that had shown it so much affection before. Now it had made its way back to him.

A friend to stick by

He seemed a little sceptical but nonetheless satisfied with my explanation. He spent quite a time with the stick. It was clear to me that he was enjoying playing with it, and I saw no evidence that the stick wasn’t enjoying being played with just as much.

So, who knows? Maybe it was the same stick. And who can prove otherwise?