My hopes for my newly-born grand-daughter
Any of you who follow These Are The Heydays on social media (and if you don’t, come and join the gang at Instagram and /or Facebook) will know that this has been a rather momentous week, to say the least. Because it has heralded the arrival of my first grandchild.
My eldest gorgeous girl now has a gorgeous girl of her own.
Her safe arrival in the world (and someone could have warned me how much more stressful it is when your child is in labour than when you are. The waiting to hear all was well was agonising!) means I have shifted up a generation, along with my mother who has now assumed the impressive matriarchal role of great-grandmother.
The newest member of the family already has the three generations ahead of her wrapped around her impossibly tiny little finger (her parents have asked for her face not to be shown)
My girls were lucky enough to have a great-grandmother in their young years - long enough for them to remember her well - and I very much hope my little granddaughter will enjoy the same privilege as she grows.
That, though, is only one of the hopes I have for this first of the new generation of our family (she is the fifth grandchild for her other grandparents). This tiny, precious addition to the lives of her parents, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt and uncle (no cousins as yet. That’s another hope for another day!)
These are just some of the others:
Of course I hope she will be healthy and happy, but more than that I hope that as she grows, so too will her curiosity, her inquisitiveness and her eagerness to explore the world.
And I really, really hope that exploration will be at least as much in the real world around her as it is on a screen in front of her face.
I hope that she will grow a kind heart and a loving nature. That she will inherit her parents wonderful intelligence, humanity and humour. A generous helping of her aunt’s innate stylishness wouldn’t go amiss either.
I hope that by telling her about him she will come to feel she knows her grandfather just a little. Even though she will never meet him. He would have loved her so much and been such a wonderful grandparent. And a hilariously silly one too.
I hope she will always know the comfort of a loving home as a place of sanctuary and security. There are too many children in the world who don’t have that fundamental childhood right.
I hope she comes to understand that when she falls or fails - which she inevitably will, in many different ways - there will always be an endless supply of loving arms to scoop her up and set her on her way again
I hope she will discover books she loves, and passions that absorb her and revel in how they will transport and transform her.
I hope the world she grows to adulthood in will be a kinder, safer and more tolerant one than it seemed to be at the time of her birth.
I hope she will always bring her parents as much joy as her mum and aunt have brought me.
And I hope she will soon learn to sleep well at night. She’ll discover her mummy is always much happier when she has had a good nights sleep!
Welcome to the world my beautiful little granddaughter. I hope I will be lucky enough to watch you as you grow and see how you change the world around you. You have already transformed mine.
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