It’s never too early to be thinking of a potential marriage. I mean, Catherine of Aragon was engaged to be married at the age of three. I know that ultimately didn’t work out too well but, hey, emulating her precocity doesn’t necessarily mean following destiny.
Our grandson Elliott is four and the subject of his marriage came up during a visit by Danielle (my wife, his grandmother) to his house late in May.
The question was whether he should marry his closest, oldest friend Cora.
He thought about this for a moment before reaching a decision.
‘No,’ he announced, ‘she’s much too bossy. She’s just a friend.’
So who would he marry?
He thought for a while again. ‘Maybe Lola. She isn’t bossy at all.’
But a while later, having had the chance to reflect on things, he thought better of that too. Lola, too, it seems is just a friend.
Matilda, in the meantime, had announced that she didn’t want to get married at all, or have kids.
‘Then you can babysit mine,’ Eliott told her, ‘because you’ll be their aunty.’
Matilda’s developing her own fine way with words. On the occasion when Elliott fell asleep on the floor only to wake up crying, Matilda had her judgement ready.
‘Oh,’ she declared, ‘somebody got up from the side of the carpet today.’
Later, Danielle and I travelled back to the grandkids’ place, this time together, for a flying visit to attend a major event, a rite-of-passage marker. It was scheduled for 6 June 2025, which for some people might seem significant as the eightieth anniversary of the D-day landings in Northern France. Matilda had a different view.
She showed me the pile of clothes she’d prepared days before and topped with a handwritten note. ‘6’ it proclaimed, for the date, followed by the word ‘Graduación’. In Spanish, of course, since we were talking about a notable event in the life of a Spanish school.
Now I’ll confess that in my naïve way, it seemed to me that graduation was something that turned you into a graduate. In other words, something that closed a period of undergraduate study at university (from undergraduate to graduate – all seems logical enough, doesn’t it?). I’d previously only been to one graduation event. A friend of mine had asked me to attend hers, when she received her University of London degree, a year before I did.
As I’ve grown older (it’s true that at the time I was only 25, but that was still as old as I’d ever been up to then), I’ve become increasingly intolerant of boredom. And those three hours in the Albert Hall in London, while I watched Elizabeth the Queen Mother handing out degree certificates to a long line of new graduates, were so utterly monotonous that I didn’t attend my own ceremony the following year.
The Americans don’t in any case wait to become graduates to have a graduation. They graduate at the end of High School. In other words, those who are going on to university, have to graduate to become undergraduates. Well, each to their own I suppose, but I can’t help feeling that a nation whose citizens keep telling me how much more logical their approach to things is than mine (you know, why do we put a ‘u’ in ‘colour’, or how can we play a game like cricket that can last five days and still end in a draw), I find that one a little odd.
Well, the Spanish have gone further. Far further. They graduate, as Matilda did on 6 June, from Infant School on their way to Primary School. They graduate twelve years before there’s any chance of becoming an undergraduate.
Still, at least there was nothing in the least bit Queen-Mother-ish, or Albert Hall-ish, about the ceremony. It was all song and dance and celebration. And Matilda, I think I can say in all objectivity and not simply because she’s my granddaughter, danced with more verve, commitment and panache than any of the others.
They must have worked for hours over many weeks to prepare all the songs. And it all went off without a hitch. The music played the right songs at the right time. The graduating kids sang and danced as rehearsed throughout. And they came up in groups to address the audience at the right moment, saying the right things without a flaw. Matilda made her announcement in English, adding a fine flavour of multiculturalism to an otherwise entirely Spanish hour: ‘thank you for coming,’ she told us all, ‘this is a very special day’.
If I can be allowed a small – perhaps nit-picking – objection, it would be that although it was great idea to put all the kids into identical black tee-shirts, it seems a pity that they were marked ‘we’ve reached the goal’. Personally, I’d like to think that such a bright bunch might well pursue rather higher goals than simply making it into primary education. On the other hand, I don’t want to allow my cynicism to cloud in any way an event that was charmingly marked by joy and enthusiasm.
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| Matilda, her teacher Alicia, and her certificate |
A quick word for Elliott, too. He was there to support his sister and gave that support unstintingly. What’s more, his behaviour was exemplary, much to his credit.
The same can’t be said about what happened later that day, when the father of another child approached Elliott and me with his son.
‘You hit my son with a stick,’ he accused Elliott.
‘He lied to me,’ Elliott countered.
‘That’s not a good reason to hit him with a stick. You have to apologise.’
Well, Elliott had the grace to apologise and I insisted the two boys shake hands at the end of the process, which was terribly English, I suppose. The other dad insisted that they fist-bump too, which gave it a bit more of an American flavour.
I found the whole event slightly risible. Elliott had actually given me a ‘stick’ to hold for him (there were plenty of sticks around so I have to admit I just threw it in the bushes). I think it was the weapon in question and, to be honest, it barely deserved the term stick. It was more of a large twig with a few side twigs. I don’t quite see how anyone could hurt anyone else with it, especially not with the strength of a four-year-old, even a strong four-year-old. Well, perhaps if they forced the victim to swallow the damn thing, but there’s no suggestion that this is what happened.
But in any case, I do have a bit of a moral issue with this. Physical violence is, of course, a terrible scourge in the world today. But then so is lying – look at how fake news is undermining our democracies.
With hindsight, I wonder whether the apology was given by the right party in this minor altercation. Which is more serious, a minor blow or a lie? Perhaps it’s the supposed victim who should have apologised to Elliott for his mendacity. Or, at any rate, should they perhaps have apologised to each other?
Still, I don’t want to end this account on a moral quandary. This supposed aggression had occurred at a time when a bunch of kids were spending an afternoon playing together. One was Cora who, you’ll remember, is a little too bossy for Elliott’s taste in a wife. There’s clearly a bond there, however. When we first turned up to drop Matilda off with the group, Elliott was fast asleep in his mum’s arms. When she walked off with him, Cora was distraught, weeping and shouting out her disappointment and anger.
Fortunately, Elliott’s naps don’t tend to be long, and he didn’t get out of bed the wrong side on this occasion. Cora was soon consoled, no longer distraught (does that make her traught?) and delighted to get the chance to play with him. Indeed, it wasn’t long afterwards that another grandparent approached me to communicate an important moment she’d just witnessed.
‘Elliott has just asked Cora to come with him to Valencia,’ she told me with some delight, ‘and Cora said yes.’
Valencia is, of course, where we live and where the grandkids regularly come to visit us. Not usually with potential life partners, however.
I’m not quite sure what I should say. Should I encourage this kind of intimacy? Is it OK for a four-year-old boy to have his girlfriend – or at any rate girl friend – holidaying with us such a long way from home? Would it have been better if he’d decided that he did want to marry her and therefore made clear his honourable intentions towards her?
Or would that have made it worse?
