I was a reluctant grandmother. “I’m too young to be a grandmother,” I warned my children. When my oldest broke the news that, like it or not, I had reached the age of grandmother-consent, I behaved in proper grandmotherly fashion: excited, enthusiastic, supportive.
All the while thinking “But I’m not old enough!” Aren’t grandmothers supposed to be imbued with wisdom, patience and a faint whiff of l’Air du Temps? I have the face and form of a 60-plus woman with the outlook of a 17-year-old. How does that translate into wise old owl? Holding my granddaughter within a few days of her birth put an end to those misgivings. I felt a rush of pheromones akin to the rush I felt when my first child – her father – was born.
My first solo outing with her was to a café near her home in northern NSW, where I found myself surrounded by big burly chefs with multiple tattoos and children of their own, cooing like pigeons around my granddaughter. I couldn’t take my eyes off her sleeping form in the pram and remembered how – thirty years earlier – I had configured her father’s pram so that I could gaze at him while walking. In the six years since then, I’ve seen her learn to smile, walk, talk, and bond with her baby brother.
I’ve watched him transition from a pink-loving wearer of fairy dresses to a soccer-loving four-year-old. I’ve been there for as many milestones as possible, considering the 1600 kilometres that separate us. I’ve also witnessed the vicis.