Grandfathered

by Ian Haysom

  I don’t hold hands with my kids anymore. I’m not sure when it stopped. Probably when they were young teenagers and embarrassed by any parental signs of affection, particularly in front of their friends. My sons and daughters still hug me and my wife when we meet, and a few weeks ago my youngest daughter walked arm-in-arm with me down the street, but hand-holding with your kids is a thing of yesteryear.

  Which is why holding hands with your grandchild feels so very special. Briefly, too briefly, you can hang on literally and figuratively to the past. By your fingertips. I guess that’s why your grandchildren are important—they help you remember all those small things you did with your own kids. You never wanted your kids to grow up. Or you wanted a moment frozen in time, like that summer holiday at the beach with endless sun and so much laughter. And here, now, with a grandchild, you get to feel it all over again. Grandchildren are second chances.

  Usually, I’m the instigator of hand-holding. “Here, hold my hand as we cross the street.” Or “Stay close to me, Mayana. Come and hold my hand.” And she does.

  But when she does it of her own accord, when she searches for my hand and grabs it, then it becomes something even more significant.

  “Here, Grandad, come and see this,” she will say, and hold my hand and lead me to the swing or to a shop window or to see a bee buzzing on a flower.

  Sometimes she will hold my hand when she’s scared. Maybe of the dark, perhaps because we’re about to meet another adult and she’s uncertain or intimidated.

  Sometimes, and this is my favourite moment of all, her hand just snakes into mine for no reason.

  Well, no reason except I’m her grandad, and I’m her protector, old friend, confidant, playmate, singing buddy, joke-teller and all-round fun person.

  And, maybe, just maybe because she feels me squeeze her hand just a little tightly whenever she puts it there.

  Take Me for a Ride

  We didn’t just walk or go to the park when we went outside. We drove a lot too. Me in front, Mayana in the back in her child’s seat. A child’s seat is the most godawful contraption in the world. The straps are too loose, or the buckle won’t do up, or you can’t find where the seatbelt clicks in. You’re exhausted when you finally sit in your own seat.

  Driving with Mayana is never boring. Usually, when I drive alone, I go into a dull overdrive, not really paying attention to much around me, occasionally listening to the radio. Letting my mind wander. Yet still paying attention to the road.

  When you have a three-year-old granddaughter in the kid’s chair in the back, you look at her through the rear-view mirror almost as much as the road ahead. But you drive extra carefully. I hate those baby on board stickers on the rear of cars, but I drive like I have one that says don’t even think of coming close to anyone in the back of this vehicle. Mayana sometimes complains I drive too slowly. With her, I can’t help it.

  We sing a lot in the car. Everything from “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” to “The Wheels on the Bus” to a whole panoply of Raffi songs. I used to sing Raffi songs to my kids when they were small, and now I get a kick out of singing “Baby Beluga” and “Shake Your Sillies Out” and our favourite, “It’s Mine but You Can Have Some.” That one works on all kinds of levels, particularly when I want to snag some of her candy.

  I got really happy when I taught her “Yellow Submarine.” I didn’t mind singing it again and again while she learned it. I did get irked a few months later, however, when, in the back of the car ...

  “Listen to this song, Grandad. My dad taught it to me.” She started singing.

  “That’s ‘Yellow Submarine’! I taught you that song,” I said, somewhat wounded.

  “No, my dad did,” she insisted.

  I decided to back off gracefully. “Then he did, about three months after I did,” I said under my breath.

  Sometimes we do quizzes in the car, like I used to do with my own kids when they were young.

  Easy ones. “What does a cow say?” Trickier ones. “What does a hyena say?” Funny ones. “What does a kid eating mud say?”

  A: “Yeeeeeuch.”

  Sometimes we just talk. She asks me stuff, easy stuff like where are we going, when are we getting there, where’s Nani, where’s Uncle Tim, why are you driving so slowly, Grandad?

  One day she said, “I figured something out, Grandad. Adults talk. Kids play.”

  “Yes,” I said, “sometimes we talk and talk and talk.” “Yes,” said Mayana. “You should play more. It’s more fun.”

  A therapy session from my granddaughter. Play more. Talk less. Not a bad mantra.

  Once, after we’d been swimming—which turned out to be one of Mayana’s favourite things to do—we decided we’d head to a kids’ movie playing at the nearby Cineplex. I was chatting and singing and then I looked in the rear-view mirror and noticed that her eyelids were drooping.

  “Do you want to see the movie? Or shall we leave it another day?”

  “Another day, Grandad,” she said, and was instantly asleep.

  And that is one of the loveliest things you’ll ever see in your rear-view mirror.

  5. Getting the Call

  One summer morning, I got a phone call.

  “Baby’s coming,” said my son-in-law, Chris, Jani's husband.

  I was just getting out of bed on a beautiful July morning on Salt Spring Island, where I had been staying with Amy and Mayana. I had been groggy when I answered the phone. Suddenly I was wide awake and jolted into action.

  I woke up my daughter and granddaughter. “I have to rush,” I said. And then, to Mayana: “Looks like you’re about to have a cousin.”

  She started clapping.

  Amy didn’t have classes that day and promised to come over later in the afternoon, once the baby was born.

  “Me too,” said Mayana, full of excitement.

  I called my wife. “On my way,” she said.

  We were both, coincidentally, on small islands. Me on Salt Spring, two hours away, and my wife on Quadra Island, nearer five hours.

  We got there the same time.

  “I drove like the wind,” she said.

  We walked into the hospital together. “Grandad,” she said, “we are going to have our second grandchild today.” We hugged.

  I spent most of that day in a waiting room in the maternity wing. My wife and Chris were in the birthing room with Jani. She didn’t want me in there.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I get it.”

  I was given regular updates. As did two other grandfathers in the room. This, I guess, is what it felt like for expectant fathers before dads became part of the birth process. I saw all four of my kids born, two of them at home, and from a man’s point of view anyway, those births were a lot easier. Because I knew what was going on.

  Every now and then we’d hear a scream, a blood-curdling yell, from one of the birthing rooms, and we three grandfathers would look at each other with fear in our eyes. Our daughters were in there. Our little girls. Going through hell.

  At one point, about nine hours after we got in there, I heard Jani yowl.

  “Nooooooo . . .”

  It was her voice, all right. Unmistakeable. So loud, so distraught, so sickeningly sorrowful, that we thought something terrible must have happened. I had to stop myself from rushing into the room. I waited five minutes before my wife appeared.

  “All good,” she said. “Just taking a long time.”

  All good? How could that wail be good, in any way at all? But I relaxed some.

  “When is it coming?” I asked, one of the all-time stupid questions. My priceless senior’s moment.

  “When it’s ready,” she said. “Jani’s hanging in there. She’s amazing.”

  The other grandfathers got their calls. One granddaughter. One grandson.

  I was sent to get flowers and a card. Tw
o cards. One for a boy, one for a girl. I got two different balloons too.

  Emma, lovely Emma, my beautiful second granddaughter, was born late in the day on July 5. I first saw her in my daughter’s arms. Jani looked like she’d been run over by an express train, but still smiled.

  “You look beautiful,” I said. “And so does she.” And I kissed them both.

  And they did. Men don’t usually get babies. Not as much as women do. Women immediately oooh and aaaah and become Jell-O around newborns. Men get the miracle of it all, but they’re confronted with a nearly bald, squished-up miniature version of Winston Churchill.

  Emma didn’t look like that. Not to me. She was magical and miraculous from the moment she was born. When you’re a father or a grandfather, you see things other guys don’t see.

  You always will.

  Later, when Amy and Mayana arrived to greet Emma, there was a perfect union of four young ladies. Our two daughters with their daughters.

  Mayana was over the moon with excitement, and held Emma in her arms for a while, smiling the entire time. They have been great buddies ever since.

  Mayana has always treated Emma as her kid sister, beaming whenever she sees her. For a long time (once she learned how to talk), Emma simply called Mayana cousin, as in, “Hey, cousin, what shall we do today?” “Cousin, shall we play in my room?”

  But that day, Emma was a magical baby. And there was plenty of magic still to come.

  Babysitting Emma

  One afternoon I babysat Emma at her home. She was about six months old, and I had a free afternoon and was available and nobody else could do it.

  “She’s asleep and she’ll probably stay asleep until Chris gets home,” said Jani reassuringly, so I sat at the dining table with a book, relaxed.

  And then all hell broke loose.

  Jani had been gone less than two minutes before the screaming started. You will remember I had a screaming incident with Mayana. You’d be forgiven for thinking that perhaps that little episode would have prepared me for this. It did not.

  I rushed into Emma’s bedroom, checked she wasn’t being impaled by a safety pin, checked her diaper (fine), checked every other part of her body that might be pinched, squeezed, or damaged, established she seemed in full working order, and then hugged her close. That comforted her for, oh, about five seconds.

  I jiggled her and walked her around and looked at the clock. It would be at least three hours before Chris would come home. So I had to get her back to sleep.

  I didn’t.

  For the next three hours I sang to her—I even pulled out a guitar to try and make it more entertaining. I played with toys for her, did little shows with stuffies, walked her around the room. Fed her. None of it worked.

  She alternated between screaming and sobbing. Sobbing! That was almost worse. When you see your helpless six-month-old granddaughter sobbing, it breaks your heart. You want to protect her, not produce sobs.

  I remembered, too vividly, almost thirty years earlier when I had gotten up in the middle of the night when Jani was crying. We lived in Ottawa then, and she was the same age as Emma was now. I told my wife I’d take a middle-of-the-night shift. Jani wouldn’t stop crying either. At one point, to my eternal shame, I got angry with my six-month-old daughter.

  “That’s enough!” I shouted, looking straight into her eyes.

  She looked confused, scared, and then she started sobbing. It is a moment I will never forget.

  And I remembered it now—and my similar lapse with Mayana when she was only a little older than Emma. I would not get angry with this tiny child who was depending on me. So I sang some more. Well, sang my whole repertoire if truth be told. I walked her up and down the living room, comforted her, sometimes tried to put her back in her crib—at which point she would scream loudly enough to wake the dead—and after two hours and forty-five minutes decided I would take her to the tiny children’s playground at the rear of the apartment complex.

  Which is where my son-in-law found me, swinging on a swing with Emma in my arms where she had, mercifully, fallen asleep.

  “Wow,” said Chris. “You look like you’ve been run over by a truck.”

  “No, we’re just fine,” I lied.

  “Well,” he said. “She looks fine anyway. You look like you need serious medical attention.”

  Squeals

  It’s not all pussy willows and cattails when you spend time with a tiny granddaughter. Sometimes—usually when you have a monumental headache and all you need is peace and quiet and a darkened room in which to die—there’s the squealing.

  Little girls take squealing to a whole new annoying decibel level. Somewhere up there with twenty-five Italian motor scooters roaring past you like a swarm of angry mosquitoes, or Barry Manilow singing “I Write the Songs.”

  I’m sure little boys squeal too. They’re certainly loud. But little girls, when they get together, sound like mice about to have their tails cut off with a carving knife. They run around the house, bouncing off sofas (well, the sofa in which I’m sitting) and punctuate every third step with a piercing scream.

  Now, it must be said that parents—today’s parents who appear to indulge every excess of their tiny offspring (did I really just write that?)—seem oblivious to the screams. Two sets of parents will sit together discussing, usually, the high cost of childcare (forgetting grandparents are doing it for free) or comparing notes on the latest new spa or four-star restaurant, while their children run around them, bouncing off the ceiling, screaming for their lives. There could be an axe murderer on the loose, for Pete’s sake, but the parents would be oblivious to anything outside their own conversation.

  Actually, maybe that’s something they have to do: tune out their children’s screams so they can go on acting like real human beings. It’s a defence mechanism. Otherwise they’d never get to talk to another grownup.

  Maybe grandparents have lost that function . . . the facility to block out high-pitched squeals and screams. Perhaps, genetically, we’re supposed to have gone deaf by now so the screams won’t bother us.

  Here’s the thing. There are sentences you don’t want to utter to your grandchildren. Here’s one:

  “Now, now, let’s all calm down and play quietly together. Do we have a jigsaw we can all do?”

  Almost as bad is someone else coming to your sorry defence:

  “Grandad’s a little tired. Can we all make a little less noise.” He’s an old fart, you see.

  That’s your no-fun grandad. Do you want to go down for eternity as a no-fun, let’s-be-quiet-children grandfather who is mostly remembered for epitomizing “shush”?

  No, me neither.

  So I grin and bear it. Sometimes I squeal or scream back, which the kids seem to love but for some inexplicable reason seems to disconcert their parents. I guess a grown man squealing like a pig is disturbing on all kinds of levels.

  Sometimes, even grandparents can’t hear the squeals. Once, Mayana and I went to a tube park, a place where you ride inner tubes down a snowy hill at breakneck speed. She sat on my lap as I lay spread-eagled on the tube, and we zoomed down the mountain. It was an amazing rush.

  When we got to the bottom of the hill, hearts pumping, big smiles on our faces and snow sticking to my beard, Mayana looked at me.

  “That was awesome, Grandad.”

  “Absolutely awesome,” I agreed. “I didn’t realize it would go quite that fast.”

  “I know. I was screaming all the way down.”

  “Were you?” I said. “I didn’t hear you at all.”

  Mayana helped me get out of the tube. “That’s because you were screaming louder than me, Grandad.”

  The Joke’s on Them

  One of the greatest things I learned about grandchildren is that they laugh at your jokes. Your kids stopped laughing at your jokes when they were around twelve
years old. They still groan. Still accuse you of “dad humour,” which means you’re lame, out of touch, and totally devoid of anything funny.

  But Mayana, during our summer together, laughed at my jokes and asked me to tell her more.

  We did knock-knock jokes: Knock, knock. Who’s there? Boo. Boo-who? Don’t cry, it’s only a joke. Silly jokes: What do you call a camel with three humps? I don’t know. Humphrey. She loved to be teased and she laughed and kept me laughing all summer.

  There’s a lot of laughter when you spend time with a small child. Mostly, they love to be silly, like to pull funny faces, or have you pull them. I became very good at silly walking and dancing, which we’ll quickly gloss over here, particularly since I had a sad habit of doing these in public, resulting in some quizzical looks from other adults, suggesting I shouldn’t be allowed outside without another grownup.

  “I have a joke,” Mayana said one afternoon.

  “Cool,” I said. “Hit me with it.”

  “Hit you?”

  “Just tell me the joke.”

  She starts giggling.

  “Weeeell . . .” she said dragging the word out to three or four syllables.

  “Yes?”

  “There was this fly . . .”

  “Right?”

  “And it flied away.”

  She dissolved into gales of laughter, bouncing up and down, and looked for my reaction.

  I couldn't help but laugh too.

  6. My Summer with Mayana

  [Part Two]

  One thing I discovered that summer of 2013 is that an afternoon nap—or quiet time—is absolutely essential for the child. No, strike that . . . for the grandparent. Spending time with a three-year-old is beyond exhausting. More exhausting than working, where you can check out or have a break for ten or fifteen minutes.

  The most popular sentence uttered by grandparents is, “It’s lovely to see the grandchildren, but it’s wonderful to give them back.”