..happened
all those years ago maybe a few inchoate memories and feelings. When you become
you is somewhere about the beginning of language and the ability to
objectify yourself. Who is that little person in the mirror? Why is my brother
hitting me? Why are other people bigger than me?
Anyway, it is a delight to watch my daughter who, as you know is practically
perfect in every way, being a good mother but suffering all the anxieties that
go with doing the most important of all jobs for the first time. What you forget
about the first weeks is the lack of sleep and the sudden inability to complete
the most simple of tasks. By international standards it probably compares to
sleep deprivation as used as a method of torture. Where did the time go? How
is that I could organise the most complicated of business affairs before and
now not find the time to do the washing?
But where she differs from her parents is that she is doing it in the fashionable
inner city and not out in the fringe bush areas miles away from anywhere. And
with parents in the same city, where we had parents in Adelaide or overseas.
Way too far for a helpful commute with a few items from Baby Bunting or a container
of frozen soup. But we made do and it all turned out quite well, in that Elizabeth
survived her parents eccentricities with great aplomb.
The area where she now lives is rife with young families. There are baby friendly
cafes where toys clatter and babies yell, laugh and gurgle amongst scores of
others junior denizens and ankle biters. You get the feeling that the area is
the equivalent of a giant seal colony or gannet nesting zone where the maternally
inclined gather in their thousands. Except it is fully electronically connected
so I can see young Lachlan’s first ride on a tram as it happens.
The peculiar thing now is that we are in the position of being seen as grandparents
– it is hard enough to realise that one is cast in the role of parent
- without the next stage being thrust upon us so damned soon. So, as we saw
our grandparents so we may well be seen. That is, for a start, very definitely
older, more wrinkled and greyer.
My maternal grandfather, Norman Rutherford, called Pop, is but the vaguest of
memories, having died whilst we were very young. He was a naïve North Canterbury
sheep farmer from a large and sometimes venal family that bred like rabbits.
I know what Pop looked like from the photographs, but to me all that remains
is a pair of stained grey flannel trousers smelling of farm, a vaguely whisky-breathed
presence, and the surrendering sound of his favourite red leather armchair as
he eased his not inconsiderable bulk into it. The cushions exhaled like a walrus
coming up from the depths as his bulk compressed everything by more than two-thirds.
He died in a diagnostic confusion, some saying that he drank because he had
cancer of the stomach, others that the drinking alone was enough to kill him.
I believe, by the way, that it was White Heather Scotch - the farming man’s
pleasure consumed immoderately, as was the local wont.
Our maternal grandmother, wife of the aforementioned Pop, we called Daye* for
some obscure reason. Her friends called her Billy, although her Christian name
was actually Mildred, which ought to have been more confusing than it was. She
lived to more than one hundred in her own mind and was continually upset by
the fact that the Queen had not sent her a telegram for her centenary. A centenary
that was still a few years away, although she still outlived all her friends.
She had the round shape of all country women of the time - jovially Margaret
Rutherford-like with a bosom that blossomed out and down like a large wobbly
barrage balloon tethered inside her blouse. She also had something of the Fairy
Godmother from Disney’s Snow White about her. She was somehow always a
grandmother even though she would have been less than 50 when we appeared, given
that our mother had started early in the child-raising game.
She lived with us in her with her floral furniture, floral teacups, rolled-up
stockings and was an endless provider of tea, crumpets, fudge and toffee –
the latter committing us to years of remedial dentistry. In her latter years
she became somewhat vague and unsteady on her feet, which made my mother put
her into a Methodist aged-care home where she made an astounding recovery. The
reason for this modern mal miracle was discovered when the empty gin bottles
were discovered in her previous abode, cupboard doors opening to cascades of
Gordon's and Gilbey’s** .
But she was the perfect grandmother. A little dotty but always there if you
felt like running away from home. A source of endless comfort, presents and
borrowable cars. It is difficult to realise that she was born in a world without
electricity, telephones, cars or aircraft and saw all of those in her lifetime.
I can imagine Daye looking up at the sky at some unusual noise and saying, “What
is that up there? I shall call it an aeroplane. What will they think of next?
Perhaps they should invent the personal computer.”
My paternal grandparents are a more complicated story for another day.
But anyway, young Lachlan has the benefit of two loving grandmothers …..
and myself. I should probably find an appropriate role model but I think that
I might just continue to be myself and let my grandson make of me what he will.
Indeed he will make me into whatever he wants – but he will know that
he has a very lucky and loving grandfather.
Anyway I am going out to practice being a bit dotty myself.
“What is that thing in the sky making all that noise? I shall call it
a Sulphur Created Cockatoo. Why is it eating all my tulips? Why is it beheading
all the beans? Because it is a bastard.”
*Probably because it was one of the first words we knew.
Norman met Daye at the Wellington races. The meeting was apparently arranged
as both had a keen interest in horses. Norman had a couple of racing horses
– a common way for the Rutherfords to lose money.
**This may not be entirely true, but it is a good story.