When you’re a bit older, there can be a sense that your world is shrinking. Like anyone of any age, you do the same things every day, except, with age, you have more of an acute sense of it. There’s a decreasing novelty.
Looking through the eyes of a child is a vomit-inducing cliche, yet when Granddaughter Number One comes to stay, that’s what happens, whether we like it or not. There can be any number of revelations that she will urgently need to share: she has toes or the dog is barking or Ms Rachel is on the TV. (I find Ms Rachel creepy, but that’s probably just me.) We will have to do some chasing or help with a jigsaw. We will have to be examined for ailments. (Granddaughter Number One is a qualified doctor. She has all the equipment any way). We also have to negotiate around the usual toddler sticking points on bedtimes and meals. We never win.
It’s all hauntingly familiar because, of course, I’ve done this sort of thing before. But the familiarity is more of a feeling than a specific set of memories. My recollection of her mother, her uncle and some of her aunts at that age is more of a blur: like dealing with a herd rather than a specific child. Often, they parented each other, and they still tease me about not being able to tell them apart. Well, one of them does. The blonde one, I think.
This time round, it’s easier to focus on Granddaughter Number One’s specific foibles. She’s not big on tantrums, but instead has learned to weaponise politeness: “no thank you” is her preferred method of refusal. That’s why she’s a master negotiator.
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And while it’s energising to be sucked into her enthusiasms, it’s also exhausting to consider the amount of information a two-year-old can absorb on a minute-by-minute basis.
Sometimes, Daughter Number Four and I have to tap out for a few minutes. Herself never does. She has the uncanny ability to morph into the personality of a (very responsible) 14-year-old girl: one who is endlessly excited by baths and wearing pyjamas and knows all the words to every song on all the Disney films.
In the not-too-distant future, we won’t get to do this as much. When Daughter Number One mentioned they might move to France, I thought it was a bit of a bonkers idea, and for all the obvious reasons. But you could never accuse her of not being super-organised, and she has a detailed plan covering language and schools, tax and accommodation and other eventualities I hadn’t thought of. Now they have a place to live and a date when they are leaving.
Son Number One is back from Colombia for a while, but will be heading back to that part of the world soon. Daughter Number Three is loving her life in London, while Daughter Number Two and her partner are actively considering where they might live in the future: a future where four out of my five children, and a granddaughter, may live some distance away.
The housing crisis is a huge factor, of course. You could blame the current Government for this, or the government of 20 years ago which failed to plan for this. Which is the same government. You’d wonder why the parents of this emigrant generation kept voting for them.
Not that my children, or any of their peers, are without agency. They’ve made decisions about the shapes of their lives. And with every change they make, I’m forced to expand my thinking, to reshape my familial mental map and how much of the globe it covers. My world isn’t shrinking. Quite the opposite.
That expansion might even involve language. In a year or two, I may have a granddaughter who speaks French as easily as English. As she may well say to me one day, “c’est la vie”.
