4

I was forty-three when my first grandchild came along, and another five would follow. Each child seemed like a miracle. I would hold these new-born babies, sometimes within minutes of their arrival, with such a profound sense of wonder, as if they were an extension of myself. Which, in a manner of speaking, they are. They stopped coming a long time ago, but now they are reproducing themselves. I have five great-grandchildren already. I have to remind myself that they already have grandparents – my children. I have learned to cede some rights. But they are still part of that great life cycle to which we all belong.

I have a saying that I pass on to friends who are becoming grandparents for the first time. I tell them: ‘Becoming a grandparent is nature’s way of reminding us when we are old what it is like to fall in love again.’ And they agree.

Grandparents, it has to be said, can be crashing bores, thrusting photographs in front of their friends, or even people they meet on buses and trains, demanding that these children be admired. They are the smartest kids, they will tell you, cute and funny and endearing, and given the slightest chance they will launch into a story that demonstrates the truth of their assertion. I have done it myself, waited for the murmur of approval, the polite nod of the head, the obligatory smile. But it’s true, there is some deep level of response, almost hormonal, primeval, a triumphant inner shout that says I endure, I am now, and I am the future. We see it in these children.

My own parents were fine grandparents, their home the perfect holiday destination for our children until they moved close to us. My father and I had had an uneasy relationship, as he did with most people, and remembering that makes me sad for all sorts of reasons. He had an inner loneliness but, in his grandchildren, he discovered a love that tumbled out unrehearsed. There were times when I envied the closeness between him and my daughter. He blew blue smoke rings around his grandchildren until the last painful week of his life, when he left behind an unexpected legacy. As he lay in hospital, he repeatedly asked my son, then eighteen, for a cigarette, which he refused, as he was bound to. Afterwards, my son told me that he had made a resolution, stubbed out his last cigarette because he couldn’t bear to be in that dreadful position himself. He never smoked another. A day or so later, my father died in an infectious-chest ward, while down the corridor lay his newly born first great-grandchild, unmet though he had longed to survive long enough to see her.

What sort of a grandparent have I been? Or, were Ian and I, because it was a joint endeavour from the beginning.

In my view, Ian was a model grandfather. When he set eyes on his first grandchild, a girl, a fierce protective bond was forged between them that lasted until the day he died; he never stopped loving her, he never failed her. And when he was old and growing frail, she looked after him. Neither, so far as I could see, did he fail the boys who followed. In their memory, he is the person who made them laugh, who performed tricks, who made sure they got home safely, who put his hand in his pocket if they needed things, who stood and cheered Saturday after cold Saturday at sports grounds, who muttered curses to himself if the referee called against them. When the chips were really down, he’d speak his mind to his grandsons and they would listen. He was Grandpa; his was the word.

For my part, I cooked often for my grandchildren, and food is as good a persuasion, a honey pot, if you will, as any. They swarmed all over many meals. But I was also the Grannie who was hopeless at board games, timid at cards, couldn’t kick a ball, but decided they should have experiences, like going to the theatre. The girl and I did a lot together, the experiments with the boys were more spasmodic, but instilled in all of them is an acknowledgement of the arts and a real love of music and drama and painting. I’m proud of that.

In return they would bring small treasures and finds, and these are scattered around my house still. I used to think I should explain the odd assortment of mementoes: they’re not connected, they don’t have a theme and most of them have little value, except to me. A visitor once remarked that our house was ‘comfortably cluttered’. Well. So? There are shells collected at beaches, toby jugs from second-hand shops, pen knives, a chipped vase, stones painted in rainbow colours, a model fishing boat built to scale. I know where each item came from. There is, as well, a beautiful art installation painted by the grandchild who is now an artist in London. And, tucked alongside my grandmother’s silver teapot, there is a souvenir Arc de Triomphe, about the width of my closed fingers, coated with a dull bronze-coloured patina that is soft and silky to the touch. When I look at it, I see a fifteen-year-old boy with a dagwood haircut, wearing the baggy trousers that were fashionable twenty years ago, boarding a plane.

At school this boy had a best friend whose English parents decided to relocate to their hometown, taking their son with them. As they left, they said blithely to my grandson, Come and see us in England. He took it seriously; he was that kind of person, still is. He scrimped and saved by stacking shelves at the supermarket after school and family threw in money as Christmas presents. When he had the fare together, he bought his ticket and off he went, all by himself, an unaccompanied minor.

‘Darling,’ I said, at the airport, ‘you can’t go all the way to London without going to Paris.’

What on earth was I thinking? This boy, my son’s child, looked at me with the typical quizzical gaze that he has carried from childhood, through medical school and into marriage and parenthood. I could see what he was thinking: How do I afford that? And, it occurred to me afterwards, What a mad grandmother I have. I popped a roll of notes into his hand.

‘For Paris,’ I said. ‘You get on the Eurostar.’

He went, and to Amsterdam too. On the way there and back he was searched for drugs, this blond, clean as a whistle child. Well, of course he was. What was I thinking, really? When he arrived back in New Zealand, his parents had to sign to get their child back off the plane.

The Arc de Triomphe is what he brought me back, his trophy and mine.

I have been that sort of grandmother.

My children didn’t know their paternal grandmother until they were at school. I had been married to Ian for ten years. There had been an estrangement within the family. I loved Ruby, real name Amelia, when I met her, and it was mutual. She knitted for the children and crocheted a bed jacket for me and gave me treasured items of jewellery that she wanted me to pass on. Her story, a hard life, is reflected in my short fiction, ‘A Needle in the Heart’. Her lineage, Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Raukawa, runs through some but not all of my descendants. My son, who came to me as an infant, is of Greek origin: he is Papou rather than Grandpa to his grandchildren and they call their grandmother Yiayia. So I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are Greek. And Ngāi Tahu. And Spanish and French, and Chinese and Dalmatian, not to mention that blend of Irish and Scottish that runs through my veins and our story and song lines.

Although it is true that I come from settler stock, what I see in my descendants are people far removed from that constraint, that perception of themselves. They are both of and at one with the land and, at the same time, bring new dimensions to what it is to be a citizen of Aotearoa New Zealand. They have set me free from the uneasy past.

Everyone has grandparents. Not everyone has grandchildren. I have been fortunate.

There are things I could go on and on saying. Like the names. We hand them down too, treasures to keep memory alive. My granddaughter shares the names of two great-grandmothers, and also of my mother, Flora. My son bears the name of his adopted great-grandfather, stretching back generations and carried forward to his children and his grandchildren.

I can tell you about the olive trees that grow outside my kitchen window. Each one was planted by a grandson, each one sturdy and brave against the winds that blow here on this hill where I live.

I can tell you that, at Ian’s funeral, he was carried from the church by his six grandchildren, who had hurried from here and there, around the world.

I can tell you that the one who came from London slept beside his grandfather’s coffin for five nights, here in this room where I am writing now.

I can tell you that my granddaughter slept beside me on some of those nights.

And that is enough.