Grandma in Waiting!

It’s nail-biting stuff! I’m a 26 week grandma-to-be and I’m discovering it’s really a lot like being pregnant all over again! Well, not really – I’m spared the nausea, indigestion, exhaustion, sleep disturbances, internal football practice in the small hours and all those other delights that go towards making that first pregnancy so fascinating. But the waiting is the same and the sense of expectation. The same period of adjustment is provided for grandparents as for parents-to-be, thankfully, so I can just daydream these nine months away, imagining how it will be, who it will be and how my role will turn out in the whole proceedings.

So I’m waiting – and knitting! Yes, that time-honoured tradition of the authentic grandma role must be observed and there are tiny items of clothing being lovingly fashioned, stitch by stitch, so that this very special (most special ever?) baby will have the best start in life, warm and cosy and clothed from head to foot in garments ‘made with love’.

Each week on the pregnancy calendar there are new events to record. Telephone calls to our daughter are longer than ever, with each new detail to discuss and digest. Furniture removals are going on in order to transform their home into a suitable ‘nest’ and the nursery is taking shape. The nesting instinct is strong. Items of nursery equipment are being researched and the hitherto neat and tidy apartment is going to be inundated with a barrage of necessary clutter.

Next week there will be a visit to us from mum-to-be (whilst the airlines will still take her on board!) and we shall go shopping, of course. We can drool over all the latest baby fashions together, agonise over options for prams and car seats and help choose maternity wear – now much needed with all the expansion that has been going on. Yes, I’m a grandma in waiting! And enjoying every minute of it! I’ve been transformed into one of those stereotypical, sentimental first grandchild expectees (is that a real word?) and I find myself exhibiting all those nauseating, over-emotional traits that all the others exhibit. If I’m like this now how will I be during the birth? Oh, I have all that to come! Bring it on – I can stay up all night in sympathy - and don’t forget all my grandma congratulations cards afterwards… I’m going to be a star!  

I Think I Have a Leak in my Brain

I was sitting at the dining table last night, spooning cherry yoghurt out of the pot, when an image popped into my mind. It came from nowhere apparently. One minute I was at home in my dining room sharing a meal with my husband on Saturday night and the next it was summer and I was sitting at a table in the garden of a rather nice seaside café in the Welsh resort we frequented whilst on holiday just this year. I was eating a cream tea.

Why do these things happen? Or perhaps they only happen to me. I don’t know. Maybe you haven’t experienced this particular weird phenomenon. There seemed to be no reason for the sudden flashback. I wasn’t thinking about Wales, about cream teas or even about gardens. It was a dark, rainy, autumnal evening and I was sitting indoors with the curtains drawn, thinking about clearing away the meal and settling down to another episode of our current, favourite DVD series. A few days previously the same thing happened, first to me and then to my husband, who confessed to finding himself momentarily in a car park in Tenby, also on our Welsh holiday, where we had parked the car overnight close to the guest house. So I’m not the only one. We discussed the subject for a while and then gave up trying to understand it. Now it has happened again.

The mind seems to be a strange thing. More and more it seems to me like a sophisticated computer. Sometimes when I cannot remember something from the past I mutter in frustration: ‘wrong disc’. It seems that much of the information we amass from the previous years of our lives is stored in our brains on separate discs, one per subject or theme. It sometimes seems if only we can access one half-remembered fact from a particular ‘lifetime’: a previous job, a group of friends, a former school we once attended, then the whole ‘disc’ opens up and a flood of related information pours out. Suddenly, when once we have remembered the name of one former school friend, we can remember almost the entire class from that era, as if it were only yesterday. Isn’t it strange?

Similarly, I have a whole album of photographs and images stored somewhere in my brain – a bit like my very own Google images folder. It is this that appeared to be leaking the other night. Suddenly, an unsolicited image from my past escaped from the folder and leaked into my present day consciousness. I never asked it to. I never clicked on it. The mind is a fascinating thing, but I never realised before that it leaks. Maybe it’s because it was raining. Any ideas?

Old Friends

An Old Friend

Mottley, spottily, speckly brown,

Golden and russet leaves tumbling down.

Burning and turning like flames in the hearth,

Burnished and bright as jewels, cover the path.

Streakily, sneakily, soft, with no sound,

Drifting on air currents, fall to the ground.

Yellow and mellow, like gold-tinted rain,

Season of fruitfulness, autumn again.

Kaleidoscope patterns it skilfully weaves:

Treasures untold in a handful of leaves.

I love the way the seasonal things come around each year like old friends visiting. I made my Christmas cake today - a tradition that pays tribute to my mum's wise advice to always make your cakes and puddings well in advance, preferably in October, to allow the wonderful flavours to mature for as long as possible before cutting into that first longed-for slice at Christmas. It's a tradition - another of those old friends - and her advice is still good after all these years.

With the cake safely in the oven I wondered what to do next and ventured outside into the garden to see how the annual leaf fall is doing. The creeper on the back wall is just beginning to turn all those glorious shades of red and orange and the pyrocanthus berries are still glowing orange too, at least those which the pigeon has allowed us to keep. No doubt he will finish them off before too long with his apparently insatiable appetite. As for the leaves, there's plenty to sweep up again. But that's all part of the passage of the seasons and something to look forward to (mostly).

I wrote the poem to celebrate some of these old friends and especially the delights of autumn. Maybe the leaves can stay on the path for today - they look so pretty...

Living in the Future

“Koffie verkeerd?” “Ja – jazeker!” I reply, accepting her offer of a mug of hot, milky coffee. She has anticipated my order – a sign of my regular attendance at this charming café at the heart of the town and conveniently situated just at the point where I am starting the journey home, laden with shopping bags. But it’s not enough. I have a routine, it’s true, but not a life here. I have outgrown my life here, tried all the options, enjoyed them for a while, but I’ve run out. What I have is good but it’s no longer enough. I want to move on.

So the endless discussions rumble on. When we retire, where shall we go? Back to our home country, of that we are sure, but where? Back to where we came from? Or back to where we spent the early years of our marriage, bringing up our young daughter, close to the seaside, in a gentle, relaxed part of the world that is also tempting for a laid-back retirement lifestyle? Shall we have a garden? A bijou patio garden, full of pretty pot plants but not too much to care for? Or one of those corner plots with room to grow our own veg? Should we head for a quaint cottage or settle for a modern home where we can at least have a few years of peace before we have to worry about its upkeep and repairs?

The future is a foreign country – unknown, uncharted and bristling with adventure. Although we are heading home to our countrymen who speak our language and think like we do about most things, we are heading for unknown territory and the details, the questions and the dilemmas fill every waking hour. One day there will be an end to all this. We shall live in the future. Our fate will be sealed and we will find ourselves in need of new topics of conversation. Daydreaming will be over and we will wake up to a very present reality.

How will that be? I have no idea. This transition stage of our lives drags on and on. It has become a way of life. We can no longer see beyond it. But one day it will be over. We must keep our eyes fixed on that point for one day it will come. The present will be past and then we will live in the future. It’s a sobering thought. We must be careful how we build that future. We may have to live in it for a long time.