I wish I were a grandmother, but both my son and my daughter seem contented with their single status and independence. I have resigned myself to a grandmotherless future and have given up nagging them about getting married and enabling me to join the happy league that so many of my friends and former classmates are already in (though I sometimes still ruefully remark to my daughter that if she had got married at the same time as I did, I would have a college-going grand-daughter today!)

I suspect that the reason behind my wistful longing for grandparenthood is that grandparents can get away with boasting about their grandchildren in a way that parents can’t. And the reason is actually a scientific one, because it goes back all the way to our human origins. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, back in our ancestral birthplace in the grasslands of Africa, men and women did not live long, so there must have been a real dearth of grandparents.

Now rarity confers a special privilege, and surely one of the most gratifying sensations must be to constantly remind others of it. In the ancient, pre-language times, grandparental boasting could have been special guttural grunts or ape-like whoops each time the grandchild managed to kill a small mammal, pick out the best wild berries, watch attentively for the entire duration of his father’s stone-axe making, etc, the sounds of pride being the equivalent of ‘Look at my grandchild!’ One of these days, the scientists will come up with a theory that will have more or less this title: ‘Theory of the Evolution of Consciousness, Language and Boasting: The Primary Role of Grandparents.’

I have a relative who makes total strangers she meets in shopping centres and restaurants look at the picture of her infant grandson, her first grandchild, which she carries around in her wallet. Everyone smiles and nods understandingly at the glowing pride of the new grandmother, as she not only shows the picture, but launches into the details of his birth, weight, family resemblance and most important of all, the clear signs, even in the first few days after birth, of remarkably intelligent behaviour. ‘I shook this little rattle above his crib—it was actually an old, ugly thing that I had found somewhere—and he turned away his head, like he was disgusted with it!’

One of the acquaintances whom she cornered for a full account of all this promise of future genius, must have been getting tired of the grandmotherly effusions, but he managed to smile and say good-naturedly, ‘Hey, you didn’t invent grandmotherhood, you know.’

I enjoy listening to all the tales (some of them very tall indeed) because I swear the spontaneous pride and joy suffusing the grandmotherly face actually makes it look younger. The best compliment you can pay a grandmother is to exclaim that she doesn’t look like one.

What about grandfathers? Understandably, they are less talkative and far less forthcoming with the praises. But something they invariably say when congratulated on this new status puzzles me. There have been no fewer than three new grandfathers who have said to me, with a merry twinkle in the eyes, ‘Now I’m sleeping with a grandmother!’

Does grandparenthood only mean that to them?

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About Vignettes...

A continuing flow of little, readable pieces that will constitute what I feel is an important 'legacy of values' to leave behind. Read more about Vignettes...