What on earth are they thinking of, those women of 50-60 who want to have children? Of course its probably thwarted maternal instinct, or the realisation of an opportunity lost, or more likely just to get their photo in the paper. These women couldn’t possibly have grandchildren, or they’d know. Know better, that is!
We (and I include myself in that age bracket) are just too old for that sort of thing on a full time basis. I can say this with some authority having just baby sat my grandchildren for four days.
Now, I love my grandchildren to distraction. They are the most gorgeous, most clever grandchildren in the world. In fact when they hold a competition for ‘The Grandmother Who Loves Her Grandchildren MOST’ (entry forms available later this year), I will win it hands down (so don’t bother to even get an entry form!).
Let me wax lyrical about my grandchildren for a bit. Their tiny hands! With those teensy wincy little fingernails! Their flawless skin! Their warm bodies when they hug you! Their wet sloppy kisses! The things they say! The things they do! All grandmothers know I could go on for a page and a bit in this vein; the others of you who have dozed off can wake up again.
Its just that there is so much to do looking after little ones. At 20-30 we all can do it! We raise the kids, we work, we socialise, we write the definitive Australian novel, and have time for knitting, gardening, learning to sky dive and fingernail painting as well!
At 50-60 it’s a different matter. Oh I love doing it - babysitting. I love every minute of it, and re-live it after I’ve come home and have spent four days laying on the lounge recovering. I tell everyone stories about it – all the funny things they did, all the funny things they said – of course, by some of the reactions these may be things that you actually have to be there for, but still!
You know, if you give an adult, or even a teenager, a slice of toast and honey for breakfast, there’s every chance that they won’t say ‘This isn’t cut in the right shape’, or ‘I don’t eat the crusts, Mummy always cuts them off’, or even ‘Where are the crusts?’ Cutting crusts off is easy, putting them back on is another matter.
And they probably won’t tell you that the toast is on the wrong plate – that’s ‘the wrong colour, wrong shape, it belongs to the other child, that plate is only for spaghetti’ plate - and mostly they won’t drop the toast honey side down four times on the carpet until they reach the spot where they want to sit to eat. (Note that – not where you want them to sit to eat, but where they want to sit to eat).
I also haven’t come across an adult or a teenager who takes close on thirty minutes to eat perhaps a quarter of the lovingly prepared toast and honey. Usually you don’t have to clean a great glob of crumbs and honey out of the back of their hair either!
Grandchildren are a breed apart. How come they end up with both legs in the one pants leg? How come they put the arm in the sleeve and before you can blink, take it out again? How come they want to wear shorts and tank top when its like the Artic outside? And let me tell you, just because you’re bigger than they are, doesn’t mean you’ll win!
And, people of 50-60 years of age, should not be subjected to a child suddenly jumping off the sixth bottom step and landing inches from a dangerous object. Or taking off down the footpath towards the cross road while you are juggling pram, camera (a grandmotherly essential), drink bottle, small lunch box of sandwiches, face wipes and a handbag.
Its also a shame sometimes that little ones can’t empathise more. When a four year old suddenly says ‘Catch me’, and drops like a ton weight from a 12 foot high play platform in the park (who designs these things?!), their next comment should be ‘Oh, sorry Grandma, I didn’t realise you weren’t ready, and were already holding the aforesaid lunch box, drink bottle, handbag and camera!’
And book reading. I love reading books to my gorgeous, clever grandchildren. Nothing is nicer than to have one snuggled up on each side of you, as you start the book. The only trouble is that one wants to turn the page, and the other doesn’t. One wants to listen, the other doesn’t. If you let the one who doesn’t want to listen go, there’s absolutely no doubt in the wide world that after the book has been closed, and story read, you’ll find that one eating all the chocolate teddy bear biscuits you forgot to put away when you were interrupted.
Have I mentioned interruptions? You see, when you reach 50-60, you also have a very definite attention span. It works a little differently than the 40 second attention span of some children, but the results are about the same. If you get interrupted – say, in putting the choccy teddys up high in the cupboard where they can’t be reached, or seen – you may never remember that you were doing this ever again. Partly, I must say, because there are so many other things to do.
Shift the newspaper because Grandad will be cross if its dismantled or screwed up – oh, haven’t I mentioned Grandad before? Probably because when it comes to baby sitting little ones, apart from pulling funny faces and tickling, Grandads are absolutely no use – I repeat, not one bit of earthly use – when it comes to actually doing anything to help.
You’re in the middle of changing a nappy – you know the kind I mean – you reach for the nappies, none there, panic, you can’t let the little one go as they might fall off the change table, you can’t carry them with you while you look for a new nappy – well, you just can’t under these circumstances. So you yell, ‘Grandad, come here’. He comes, he reaches the door of the room, his nose detects what’s going on, and he reels out, gasping, never to be seen again. I told you, he might as well not be there – which is why he wasn’t mentioned before.
Then there’s bath time. Grandchildren have no regard for your expensive watch – Mummy and Daddy have sensible waterproof ones, Grandmas have pretty ones, that don’t like water. Mummys and Daddys have a inbuilt tolerance to two children screaming in a tiled bathroom (probably all those rock concerts they’ve been to). Grandmothers have sensitive ears.
Shampooing hair can be a trauma, and I don’t use the word lightly. In the end its sometimes easier to say to Mummy ‘I didn’t wash their hair – it looked pretty clean to me’. And it probably is – after all you’ve cleaned honey and crumbs, half a container or strawberry yoghurt and two handfuls of park play equipment soft fall out of it already.
And then there’s bed time. You know you shouldn’t really be looking forward to this, but dear God, if you could just sit quietly for a while and think about your aching back and contemplate your broken fingernails and the blob of permanent marker pen on your good pants, you might not feel quite so tired.
Okay. You heat the bottle, child on your hip excitedly pointing to the microwave timer as it moves at a snail’s pace. You warn everybody in the house to be quiet – well, the other child can be bribed by a Wiggles dvd, and there’s absolutely no need to warn Grandad to be quiet – he’s been comfortably asleep for the last hour and a half.
You go to the bedroom, you quietly give the little one its bottle, whilst marvelling at the velvety cheeks and the long eyelashes. You suddenly realise with a great deal of delight that those very eyelashes are closed, and you gently stand up and lift the sleeping child into bed. Well, that’s the theory – have you tried (at 50-60) to get up off a soft bed, carrying a dead weight which you must not jiggle around too much or it will wake up, and lift same dead weight up and over the cot railing, and deposit the supposedly still sleeping child onto the mattress?
After you have dropped the child from about four inches (guaranteed to wake the child up), and repeated the whole procedure with the last dregs of the bottle – this time cleverly standing up – you carefully put the little angel down, cover them lovingly, and tiptoe to the door. On reaching the door it squeaks, you hold your breath, you tiptoe out, close the door, take two steps towards that sit down and glass of wine, and who starts crying immediately? Said angel, of course.
50-60 year old’s backs tend to become very uncomfortable after hanging over the cot railing for fully thirty minutes patting a crying baby to sleep. You say helpful things like, ‘Shush, shush’, and ‘It’s alright’ (although who you’re saying that to is a moot point), and finally – finally – you can escape the bedroom.
Then you are confronted by the other child. The older child. The more responsible child, who has now taken all the toys you carefully and neatly stacked away so that Mummy and Daddy would be impressed when they come home, and spread them further and wider than they were spread before. They have also split the contents of their drink bottle over the lounge suite and their fresh clean once dry pyjamas.
You deal with all this. Everyone is in bed – except you – Grandad has been in bed for hours! – when Mummy and Daddy come home. ‘How was it?’ they ask. ‘Just wonderful’, you say, and you mean it.
Grandchildren are wonderful – they are one of the best things that will ever happen to you. You’re 50-60, you should have grandchildren and enjoy them. Then you should be allowed to go home, and nurse your aching back, and sleep for at least ten hours a day for the next four days, before answering a phone call and hearing Mummy/Daddy saying, ‘Can you baby sit?’ and answering joyfully, 'I’d love to’.
50-60 year olds who are about to join the in vitro fertilisation program – you can direct all questions to me.
© Nelma Ward
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