—Maurice Goudeket, The Delights of Growing Old
The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.
—Carl Jung
WISDOM IS RATHER a big word to apply to the kind of disorganized, random knowledge you acquire as a result of having lived a long time. I think I’d prefer to describe this condition as “not being quite such a total fool as one used to be”—rather a different kettle of fish than “wisdom.” But although we’re always prone to making new mistakes, there’s no question we don’t make quite as many of the old ones. In other words, experience pays off. If there’s not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, then at least there isn’t exactly a pile of old rubble.
Here are a few scraps I’ve gleaned over the years.1. There are two sides to every question. No, that doesn’t mean that one can never be right. I’m always right, no doubt about that. But as I age, I do concede that other people may have other views. Wrong views, maybe. Mad views. Misguided views. But views.
2. We know we can’t believe everything we read in the papers. Indeed, we know that we can hardly believe anything we read in the papers at all.
3. We know that while it’s quite acceptable to write a letter to someone we feel furious with in the heat of the moment, it’s a great mistake to mail it. We have learned this from hideous experience, and still wake in the night when we think about that horrible note we sent to a friend way back in 1955 who later married that dreadful man who died in a skiing accident, and we’re still sure somehow it was all our fault.
4. But then again, was it really our fault? Nah. We don’t feel quite so guilty about things as we used to because we know that actually, our contribution to the world’s good or ill is so minuscule as to be barely noticed, we are but ants . . . and so on.
5. We’re not quite so dominated by our emotions as we used to be, and we know that whatever happens, it doesn’t matter a helluva lot. We know that “these things, too, will pass” and that applies to the good times as well as the bad times.
6. We find it hard to worry about global warming or the end of civilization as we know it because we know that whatever happens will happen, que será, será, and because we suspect that in the end, it will all come out in the wash. This is a great relief. (If you don’t agree with me on this one, see 1. I’m right—but I am also aware you have a view on this if it makes you feel any better.)
7. The less future we have in front of us, the more we can enjoy the now, and we have no regrets. We’re happier with our lot, because we know that man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward and instead of cherishing unrealistic expectations of future happiness, we have caught on that if things aren’t too bad right now then that’s about as good as it can get.
8. When someone makes an unpleasant remark about us, either directly or behind our backs, rather than shrink into abject hurt and humiliation, it does occur to us that “Maybe they’re jealous.”
9. We often can predict the endings of films even before the initial credits have finished rolling, and we know, in a whodunit, that there’s always the chance that the detective himself will have dunit.
10. We’ve seen changes in fashions, we’ve seen skirts go up and down, and we know that what goes around comes around. Which may make us seem a little jaded, but at least we know there’s nothing new under the sun.
11. Somerset Maugham said that old people tend to be kinder and more compassionate than they were as young people—less sexual, less competitive, and less envious. It’s true. Where the idea of people becoming crabbed and bitter in their old age came from, I don’t know. (Though perhaps it was because of people like Rev. Henry Worsley [see “Boring for Britain”].) Old people’s minds function in a different way from young people’s. The older you are, the sunnier your outlook on life. Apparently retirees view the world through rose-tinted glasses, filtering out bad memories in favor of more pleasant ones. When researchers asked two groups of adults—one in their twenties and the other in their seventies—to look at photos both of disturbing and untroubling scenes, and then asked them a half-hour later what they recalled, the older group struggled to remember nasty images; analysis of their brain scans revealed differences in the way they had stored the details of the pictures. The elderly had a much stronger link between the emotional part of the brain and the frontal cortex, which does more abstract thinking, allowing them to dilute any unpleasantness. In other words, we’re nicer.
12. We know exactly the difference between being in love and loving and we know that we much prefer the latter. We also know that when a partner says he “wants more space” it’s a euphemism for saying the relationship, in his view, is as dead as a doornail.
13. If we lend someone money, we no longer have any expectation of seeing it ever again.
14. We now realize, with some irritation, that when we were young and insecure everyone else was, too, even though they all seemed tremendously suave and adept at the time. Sometimes it crosses our minds that quite a few of us still feel exactly the same, even now. To our astonishment we realize that some people are actually terrified of us still—yes, funny, little, mild, insecure, hopeless, lowly-wormy old us. Very strange.
15. One friend said that it was such a relief, as one got older, to feel that the “cameras are off me,” and I know what she means. We’re not quite so concerned about what other people might say if we said or did something. We are able to be more ourselves. We are more comfortable in our own skins.
16. We know that life is too short for an argument. And we are more forgiving, not just of other people’s behavior but also, thank God, our own.
20. Grandchildren
But the nicest thing about this second childhood is the
link it brings with the first childhood! When a year ago
Phyllis and I were sitting with a circle of grown-ups in the
Doctor’s Waiting Room waiting our turn to be called into
the surgery, there was a tiny toddler, too little for me to
know whether it was a baby-boy or a baby-girl. But after a
few minutes of surveying each other, this tiny tot waved its
hand to me, and I waved back! It was just as if we had said
to each other: “Lord! What fools these grown-ups be!”
—John Cooper Powys, in a letter to Nicholas Ross
WHEN I WAS YOUNG and gloomy, everyone would say, “Don’t worry—soon Mr. Right will come along on a white horse and carry you off and everything will be all right!” They didn’t say, as they should have done, “Don’t worry! If you play your cards right, your heart may be captured by a small red sausage with a wrinkly face, wearing diapers, a tiny fellow who will one day call you ‘Granny!’” The Welsh say that “Perfect love does not come along until the first grandchild,” and they’re right.
What was so peculiar was that no one had alerted me to this possibility. It was as if I’d gone to the guidance counselor at school and she’d given me millions of options, but failed to mention that at some point in my life—if I played my cards right—I could become a grandmother.
My grandchildless friends think my devotion to being a granny is idiotic. They tell me to “get a life,” as if I haven’t already got one. They tell me I’m crazy every time I put off going to see some ghastly play at the National Theatre in order to babysit my grandsons. “They’re asleep, for Chrissake!” they say. “They could get anyone to watch them! Why you?” But I would rather sit downstairs in a quiet house listening to my grandsons’ regular baby breathing on the monitor for hours on end than see some self-serving actor enunciating his socks off as Hamlet. I’d rather know that if my grandsons wake, someone who loves them will be there instead of a responsible stranger. Just pottering about aware that they’re upstairs sleeping, small fingers stuffed into mouths, gives me a glow that pervades until the next day.
They do say that grandchildren are the reward you get for not killing your
children. And Margaret Mead, the great anthropologist, memorably observed that the reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is because they “share a common enemy.”
For a while, like all mothers of only children—and a son, at that—I’d sensibly put the idea of grandmotherhood out of my mind. I believed that the chance of my son’s ever having children while I was alive was such a remote possibility, I couldn’t even contemplate it—even though he was just thirty-two when I turned sixty. I tried to avoid possible disappointment by imagining that if he did get together with someone, it would be with an Australian and they’d emigrate and never be seen again. Best not to hope at all, I decided. There are thousands of us, trying to whistle a happy tune in order to prevent ourselves from blurting out, to our childless children, “But when are you going to settle down? And when are you going to give me grandchildren?”
It’s that “give me” that they can’t tolerate. And understandably. The idea of a granny standing by with a huge butterfly net waiting for the grandchild to pop out and then carrying it off as a trophy must be a horrifying prospect for any self-respecting couple.
But if a grandparent plays her cards right, she can become a support rather than a threat. Sixty-five percent of grannies take an active part in caring for grandchildren. And the joy of actually being needed by anyone when you’re old is a real treat. To be needed because you can look after the delightful creatures who are your grandchildren is a double treat. The other plus to being a granny is that research has shown that families with strong grandparental connections are likely to have more stable children. Grandparents are close to the child, but also sufficiently old to be wise, and sufficiently removed from a family to be able to offer advice on how to deal with problems they may have with their parents. I often think of grandparents rather like the European Court of Human Rights. The Italians have a saying that goes, “If nothing is going well, call your grandmother,” and it’s true—if your mum has punished you and your dad has disapproved, a grandparent can perhaps shed new light on the whole incident and throw understanding on a situation to relieve the black-and-whiteness of the issue.
Of course, everything about grandchildren is completely different from How It Was in Our Day. Before the baby arrives, there are the sonograms—unknown at the time to our generation. And always incredibly difficult to decipher. A sonogram is rather like those photographs you sometimes see featured in a newspaper of a cloud, say, in which the Virgin Mary is visible to those who can make her out. And didn’t someone once see Christ in a piece of toast?
No doubt due to my failing eyesight I could never decipher the image I was supposed to see in the sonogram photograph of my first grandchild—and felt rather like I did when, as a child, I was presented with a puzzle picture of a forest and had to find how many goblins there were hiding in the gnarled branches. So when my son showed me the scan of my first grandson, I, like many a granny before and after me, was forced to bluff. “Oh, yes I can see . . . yes, his tiny face . . . his little smile. ...” My son looked at me witheringly. “Mum! He’s only just developed legs. He hasn’t got an expression!”
Strangely, when I was a young mum more than thirty-five years ago, I wasn’t nearly so taken with life with a toddler. I remember sitting in gloomy playgrounds staring at my watch and thinking that I would rather be dead than spend another minute there. I remember the sheer grinding misery of getting up morning after morning at the crack of dawn to give the screaming child his breakfast, not to mention the endless, deadly days of freezing parks, broken sleep, and minced-up meals, the hopelessness that dogged me every day, every week, every month.
And when my son cried, I’d be tortured by feelings of being a bad mother who never should have brought him into this cruel world.
What is so immensely rewarding and fulfilling about being with my grandsons is that my love for them is pure and clear, unclouded by all the guilt, panic, and anxiety I felt with my own son when he was tiny. I don’t have that sense of “Oh, Lord, he’s tired and listless, he must hate me.” Or, “Oh dear, if I do this or don’t do that, it will ruin him for life.” If by chance one of my grandsons suddenly starts crying or yelling his head off, I’m guilt-free. Experience tells me that his fears are only tiny clouds in a fundamentally blue sky, and they will, with enough kisses and cuddles, pass.
Now I find myself, with my grandchildren, with all the time in the world. I’m happy to walk at the pace of a snail if that’s what’s required. And when we go to feed the ducks, I specially grind up some bread in the thingy, then put the crumbs into a plastic bag and off we go and I watch the youngest giving out the bread. First he puts his hand inside the bag, then he clasps the crumbs, not letting any spill. Then he withdraws his hand and turns in the direction of the ducks and—this is the clever bit—he releases his fingers as he throws the crumbs in their direction . He can feel, he can grasp, he can hold, he can gauge the right direction, he can release his fingers, and he can throw. I mean it’s just brilliant, don’t you think? I look at him. He’s so clever. And he’s so kind—he wants to feed the dear little ducks. He’s clever and kind! What more could you want?
A grandmother used to be a woman with no teeth, a bun on her head, someone surrounded by a perpetual smell of a mixture of peppermints and cabbage. And, perhaps, rather stale pee. Grandfathers were bent figures with whiskery beards and pipes, always eager to teach anyone passing the rules of chess. But we baby-boomer grannies are a different lot. We think we have as much energy as we used to when we were young (but golly, how wrong we find we are, after a day with a couple of exuberant kids) and we want to be hands-on.
Of course, there are problems. For instance, what are we called, in this day and age? I have friends who, fearful of the label “Granny” giving away their age, shout, “Don’t call me Granny!” and insist on being called by their Christian names. Another demands to be called Glammy—but not for me such euphemisms. I’m a granny, and I want to shout it from the roof-tops. I’ll even put up with the unsettlingly prophetic Gaga, which my first grandson called me for a while.
Another problem comes for our own children. My son was amazed to find that not only had he become a father, but that his mother, in the space of about five minutes, had turned into a granny. When I arrived at the house crying, “And how are you, my lambiest lamb?” he’d be telling me how exhausted he felt from being up all night with my grandson, when he discovered that I had zoomed past him to speak to the baby. “Oh, did he have a sleepless night then, my little pet? Did we have a tummyache? Were we teething? My poor little darling!”
“A mother becomes a true grandmother,” said some wit, “the day she stops noticing the terrible things her children do because she is so enchanted with the wonderful things her grandchildren do.”
Certainly I can’t help feeling rather delighted when I hear the grinding of my own son’s teeth as he kindly asks my grandson the same question as I used to ask him, when they walk back from school: “And what did you do at school today?”
Back comes the inevitable reply: “Nuffink!”
The other problem is that we may think we’re up-to-date, but we’re not. We have to compete with child-care gurus such as Gina Ford who, as far as I can gather, believes every child should be left to scream for hours before it’s picked up. We have to grit our teeth as young moms insist that children with temperatures should be left in cold rooms rather than, as happened in our day, put to bed swaddled with blankets and a hot-water bottle, to “sweat it out.” We have to keep up with the latest fads on whether a child should be put to sleep on its tummy, its side, or its back. We have to be very careful not to air our subversive liberal views on thumb-sucking, pacifiers, or “time-outs.”
Ah well, no doubt it’ll turn out okay in the end. They buck you up, your mum and dad. . . .
Naturally we had to put up with our own mothers and mothers-in-law insisting on ideas promoted by some tyrant named Dr. Truby King, who recommended that children who masturbated shoul
d wear splints on their hands to prevent the dreadful activity. And our children, poor things, have to put up with us ’60s grannies who believe that anything goes. We feel that we turn, once we become a granny, from being a mother to some wise and prehistoric person, but it’s an illusion. To our children, frankly, we’re just out-of-date.
And we have to not only go along with the new baby credo, but also untangle the new baby gadgetry.
One granny I know has the folding cot (that she bought when her baby granddaughter came to stay) still up in the spare room six years later. The reason? She is simply unable to dismantle it. The instructions have long been lost, and although every so often she goes up to wrestle with it, and has at least been able to fold up three of the sides, the fourth remains obstinately rigid.
When I was a young mum I had a traveling cot that consisted of four poles and a sling of canvas in between; the stroller was a light iron structure plucked from a construction site; the carriage, a portable baby bed on wheels. Today health and safety regulations mean that not only do you need the brain of a first-class engineer to get the grandchildren’s accessories working, but to manage first to unfold, then manipulate, and then refold whatever gadget you’ve got requires the mental capacity of a Rubik’s Cube champion.
One friend of mine had to put an open stroller into her trunk because she was unable to fold it up; another couldn’t unfold the stroller and as a result had to carry both the baby and the folded stroller miles down a country lane. Yet another was unable to undo the brake and had to wheel her granddaughter all around the park at an angle on two wheels so, instead of the ducks, the child was only able to see the sky.
You're Old, I'm Old . . . Get Used to It! Page 17