by Ian Haysom
Bedtime Stories
“Dogger. Dogger. Dogger.”
That was Mayana at bedtime. We would read a story every night, before she went to sleep when I was taking care of her, and almost every night it was Dogger.
Dogger is my favourite kids’ book. I read it to my own kids. And we found an old, moth-eaten copy that belonged to my youngest son, Paul—his name’s still in it in red marker-pen—and that’s what we read again and again and again.
I won’t spoil the story for you by telling you how it ends, but it’s a beautifully told little story about a little boy who loved his stuffed dog, how he loses it, and how his older sister tries to get it back for him.
It’s beautifully illustrated by Shirley Hughes, very English working-class, and you have a heart of granite if you’re not misty eyed by the final page.
Mayana never tired of it. Or, for that matter, any of the regular rotation of books that we read together, from Berenstain Bears through Goldilocks through Winnie the Pooh.
Again, Grandad.
Again.
Young kids love repetition. And they are comforted by familiar things.
We adults are easily bored. Even sleepy, when we read to our grandkids (I actually started snoring one night while reading to Mayana). We want something new and fresh and interesting.
Kids like the new. But when it comes to literature and songs, they want what they know.
I hesitate to recommend books to other grandparents because I find they all have their favourites. Usually a book they read as a child, or as a parent. Something that defines their culture, or interests, or who and what they are. And they love sharing those books with their grandkids.
But Dogger is something special. You’ll see.
Another popular bedtime story in our family—or a series of them, rather—revolves around the adventures of Sidney the Squirrel. Sidney is a forgetful squirrel. I invented him one night when putting one of my grandkids to bed. I forget which one.
Sidney lives with his parents and sister in a tree in the wood, and always forgets things. He forgets to take his lunch to school, forgets to pick up shopping, forgets to wear his jacket. He forgets just about anything I can think of as the story progresses.
This is no Watership Down, with deep, meaningful bits. It’s just Sidney the forgetful squirrel tying a string around his paw to remember something and then forgetting why he put the string there in the first place. And so on.
The grandkids like it. “Ohhhhhh Sidney,” they’ll say. “Not again ...” whenever he forgets a message or a bottle of milk.
Sometimes, Mayana or Emma will ask me to tell them two Sidney stories in the same night, which is way too stressful. But I try. Some Sidney stories are better than others, some are embarrassingly bad. But they’re our stories. Something we share. Linden likes them too.
Which is all well and good ... except when one of the grandchildren asks me to tell them a story I’d told before. An elaborate story. “You know, Grandad, the one when Sidney forgot his homework.”
“Ah yes,” I’ll say, having entirely forgotten the first story. “Just remind me a little bit, okay?”
Birthdays
Birthdays have always been a big deal in our family. Not when I was a kid, though. I can remember eating jelly and blancmange, a terrible concoction that sounds exotic (in French: eat white) but is essentially jelly mixed with milk and sugar. We played a couple of perfunctory games, ate some, felt sick some, and then went home.
By the time our kids were young, parties had become much more elaborate affairs, with lots of other kids, plenty of food, homemade cakes, and various themes. We had a magic party for Jani where, with Amy as my assistant, we did a basic magic show. I think Jani’s friends were about six, so wonderfully gullible. My best trick had me making a ten-dollar note that I’d burned in front of them reappear in the middle of a halved-lemon. My party piece, literally. It had a somewhat sad ending when the smoke alarms went off and the parents arrived to pick up the little darlings while they were running around, screaming. It was only a little smoke, for Pete’s sake.
We had a skating party for Amy on a school pro-d day and invited all the kids in Grade 1. We lived next door to the ice rink and ordered pizza, so it was pretty easy. Except I had to help tie about thirty pairs of skates. I owe my back many apologies.
And we had a pirate party for Paul. He was three, I think. This meant hiking him and his friends down onto a beach to look for treasure that we’d hidden. Beth led them as they sang happily all along the path. Then Amy, Jani, Tim, and I, dressed as pirates and carrying wooden swords, leaped out of the bushes, shouted “Aaaargh” and such, and the little pirates turned and ran screaming back up the hill.
“You didn’t have to be quite so authentic,” said my wife once we’d recovered and returned the jabbering wrecks to the beach.
My grandkids’ parties are even more impressive. Elsa and Anna from Frozen have been hired for a backyard party for Emma. They were two local actresses who stayed in character the whole party. Every other little girl was dressed in costume too. There was also a bouncy castle—how did we manage before bouncy castles? There were hot dogs and hummus and avocado dip and beer and wine. These last drinks were for the adults, who stayed. That’s a big difference. Parents never used to stay at parties. Now, more often than not, they stick around. A good thing. You need all the help you can get.
Sometimes, when Emma was very small, I was asked to sing some Raffi songs on guitar. The singing went quite well until I realized the kids had wandered off to play elsewhere while all the moms were sitting down and joining in. This was their music. They knew all the words.
My daughter and son-in-law have rented the local rec centre’s gym, where the kids can play with hoops and pedal cars and such, and then have pizza. They have been to parties where they make crafts, take over local parks, and play dress-up, where the kids are space monsters or dinosaurs or fairies. A friend of mine tells me his small grandchild had a Sgt. Pepper party where all the kids dressed up like mini-Beatles. I’m still envious.
Our grandkids seem to go to parties just about every weekend, sometimes more than one. I can honestly remember going to just four or five actual birthday parties when I was a child. I’m not sure if kids had them or—and this pains me—I just wasn’t invited. Mostly, we had birthday cake and the aforementioned blancmange with our family at home. I know I blew out plenty of candles, but that stopped in my teenage years. Now I’d prefer them to leave the candles off the cake. It’s becoming more of a sad inferno every year.
One in Seven Billion
Sometimes when I'm looking after them I’ll tiptoe into my grandkids’ rooms and look at them while they are sleeping. It’s something I used to do when my own kids were small. There’s nothing as beautiful or serene as a child asleep.
I look at them and think they are the most special children on the planet. Which to me at that precise moment, they are.
But here’s the thing. Grandparents around the world were doing exactly the same thing.
In global terms, my grandkids aren’t one in a million. But one in more than seven billion. That’s the population of this planet. We are but a grain of sand, an ant, an insignificant, irrelevant speck on the face of the earth
Or are we?
It’s easy to get lost in all the noise. Seven billion people can make a lot of noise. Just turn on the TV . . . there’s a lot of noise out there, much of it ugly, much of it scary.
That seven billion figure is striking some fear into the planet. How many more people can fit on this globe swirling around the universe?
Will the earth be able to feed, water, clothe, and house all these people in the future?
Probably not. A whole bunch of the earth’s inhabitants go to bed at night sparsely dressed and desperately hungry as they gaze up at those distant stars.
It’s good
that the media, scientists, and sociologists are examining all the ramifications of population growth right now, at this significant stage in the history of earth. The media will focus on human consumption, carbon footprints, and myriad population issues.
But it’s not the mass of humanity we should focus on.
It’s the power of the individual. The human story.
Or, as we say in the media, the human-interest story.
Estimates vary wildly, but somewhere between thirty and ninety billion humans have walked on this planet since time—well, earth’s time—began. There would be a lot of bones beneath that earth if most hadn’t disintegrated by now. From dust to dust. Dust in the wind.
I can’t work out what seven billion people looks like. The mind boggles. I can imagine sixty thousand people in a stadium. Maybe a hundred thousand. But the mind can’t really countenance billions of people.
It’s not the mass of humanity that’s the story, it’s the small yet heroic stories that are important. We Homo sapiens are a ruggedly individual bunch—not blank faces in the crowd, but individuals with fascinating individual and complex personalities.
Good and bad. Happy and sad. Heroic and cowardly. Ambitious and meek. Leaders and followers. Athletic and clumsy. Gifted and dull. Nerds and ne’er-do-wells. And we all got to be born, as Buffy Sainte-Marie once sang, by the skin of our teeth.
When I was in the news business, we did the big stories—but tried to balance them with small stories. We hunted for the human-interest stories, the tales of ordinary people, to relate the bigger issues. To help us all find a connection, to make you care. Because you do.
Thousands of people died on 9/11, but it was the individual stories of courage and tragedy that inspired and helped us understand. The falling man story. The “let’s roll” story. The photograph on the fence of the missing husband or daughter. And how often have we been transfixed by TV images of the miracle of a child being pulled alive from the rubble of an earthquake or other natural disaster? We can relate to the individual. Not always to the mass.
When I was a young reporter, I was often sent to the homes of accident victims to get a photo to illustrate the story.
Some reporters hated hitting the doorsteps of the grieving, but I told victims’ relatives and friends that I wanted to tell a story about a human being. Not a statistic. I often used to get the picture.
I believed it then, I believe it now. Movies tell big, sweeping epics with smaller, human dramas. Rhett and Scarlett in Gone with the Wind. Kate and Leonardo’s characters in Titanic. The anonymous tragic little girl in red in Schindler’s List, or Roberto Benigni’s wonderful father in Life Is Beautiful.
Millions died in the Second World War, but we can still cry for the fate of the individual, the girl in the red dress. We can still care about that speck of sand.
We have the capacity to love and to hate, to laugh and cry. We are ecstatic when a baby is born, particularly when it’s part of our family. We treasure its first moments and marvel at how it grows from a tiny speck into a beautiful child.
Tomorrow, babies will be born in every corner of the planet. Most, if they are lucky, will come into a world where they will be loved and cherished and nurtured on the road to the most miraculous journey of them all.
Life.
Even with a population of seven billion, we all count.
Children and grandchildren remind us of our own mortality. But they also remind us that each of us is vital and beautiful. In our very small way. Watch your grandchild sleep, and you’ll know what I mean.
8. An Early Christmas Gift
Linden was an early Christmas gift. But he was still put on hold so my daughter Jani could go to a party.
Okay, the party bit isn’t quite as hedonistic as it sounds. Linden was due a week before Christmas, when we were due to have an early Christmas with our family. Twenty-one of us. Twenty-one! Because we’re a large family, with kids, partners, aunts, uncles, cousins, and assorted hangers-on (some of whom I barely recognize) we do Christmas when we can. Actually, we do anything when we can. Bringing us all together for Thanksgiving, Easter, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, or family picnics takes military planning and a lot of flexibility. One year, for reasons I’ve now forgotten, we swapped Mother’s Day with Father’s Day, and my wife fell and banged her head and dislocated her finger when hiking on a beach, so we’re not doing that again. You don’t mess with the natural order of things.
But Christmas? It’s a moveable feast. Paul is a broadcaster now and often works on Christmas Day, and our kids’ partners—for some self-indulgent reason—want to visit their own parents sometimes at Christmas, and so when we can’t do Christmas on December 25, we do it earlier. I once did a Christmas with my sisters in England on Remembrance Day, which was beyond surreal. Sombre reflection and ho-ho-hos aren’t a good combination.
So my daughter, who was to be induced—I’m not quite sure what that means, but it apparently involves walking up and downstairs a lot to get things moving. Though I could be wrong; I’m not a doctor. Anyway, she asked if it was a problem if she delayed things to the Sunday rather than the Saturday, and they said it’d be fine if she were careful and didn’t go crazy, and so she came to the party.
A party that was, actually, quite something. We have a large building in our backyard that houses kayaks and camping gear and other stuff, but my wife and I secretly transformed it into a winter wonderland, complete with trees, lights, tables, and music. Only Mayana was in on the secret. We gathered in our family room, cheek-by-jowl, and had drinks and nibbles, and it was Jani who twigged to the circumstances. Mainly because was sober.
“So where are we eating?” she asked. And then she answered her own question. “On our laps, I guess, since there are so many of us.”
At 5:00 p.m. we told everyone to put on their shoes, and Mayana would lead them outside.
“Where are we going?” asked my brother-in-law. “To the picnic table? It’s gonna be freezing.”
Mayana led us via a line of candles into the back room, and it was spectacular. There were some tears. We ate, played silly games, laughed a lot, I played piano, and we sang “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” which always ends in a collapse of laughter.
“Okay,” said Jani as the evening subsided, “I think I’ll go and have my baby now.”
And she did. We looked after Emma, and she and her husband Chris went to the hospital the next morning while the rest of the family had an early Boxing Day. And then Chris called and said, “You have a grandson,” and we all trooped off to the hospital—children and grandchildren—and invaded the maternity department with balloons and cards and food.
“We picked you up a burger and fries en route,” we told Chris, because he’d said he was starving.
“Where’s mine?” said Jani, cradling her new son. “I pop a baby and suddenly I’m chopped liver.”
We told her we’d thought she’d be eating hospital food.
“Seriously?” she said.
“Seriously.”
In the end, she stole some of Chris’s.
Oh yes. Linden. Probably the cutest baby in the universe at that precise moment. Lots of hair again—it’s a trend in our family—and a puffy little face and, well, I could tell he was going to become a matinée idol. Eventually.
We passed him among us, all taking turns to hold and love him and oooh and aaah and all the usual stuff. I checked he had all his fingers and toes and remarked on how small they were, which is what you do, and then had to hand him on.
“Welcome to the chaos, kid,” I said. “Welcome to the family.”
I love Christmas, always have, and as a grandfather I seem to enjoy it even more . . . perhaps because with every passing year I increasingly resemble Santa Claus.
Part of that enjoyment is the memory of Christmases past. By the time you become a grandparent, you’re fortu
nate enough to have witnessed many Christmases, as a child, as a teenager, as an adult, as a spouse, a father, and then as a grandfather. You’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol so often you can recite most of the lines. And you’ve heard Bing Crosby sing “White Christmas” so often that you’re surprised that the final line still leaves a lump in your throat.
While we’re on Christmas music, I’m a sucker for “In The Bleak Midwinter” and “Silent Night,” both carols showing how much emotion can be evoked by gentle music.
I pretend I’m somewhat outraged by the fact some easy listening radio stations start playing carols in late November, and then find myself switching to them repeatedly. Until Paul McCartney starts singing “Wonderful Christmastime” and realize enough is enough. He may be one of the greatest songwriters of all time, but he could still produce his fair share of yuletide schlock.
I have been lucky enough to have had a few white Christmases, when we lived in Ottawa, and when as a family we have headed to ski hills for the holidays. I’ve also had a few hot Christmases, in Hawaii, Mexico, and Australia, but don’t enjoy them as much as I probably should. Well, in Mexico, I always get sick. So that figures. There’s not much ho ho ho or Christmas magic around when you’re spending most of your time hovering over a toilet bowl.
But there’s something incongruous about sun and Christmas. Which is why I like grey Christmases most of all. I had grey Christmases as a child growing up in England, and that’s what I usually get on the West Coast of Canada. Not rain. I like to go out for walks on Christmas Day, not huddled under an umbrella.
But that’s the point of Christmas. It is tradition and it is memory.
I remember being a child and loving the family warmth of Christmas. Mostly, I remember my parents and how welcoming they were. We were a big family anyway, in a small English council house, but that didn’t stop my mum inviting every waif and stray for Christmas dinner.