We told Nana yesterday. If you've been reading, you'll know this was something I'd been keenly anticipating.
After we left Nana's flat, we looked at each other and said, 'Well, she knew, didn't she? It wasn't a surprise.'
We went over to my folks' place and asked them outright whether they had told her our news. They both denied it, even saying they hadn't said anything which might have led her to speculate about why we were coming round. Given that Nana only lives about a mile away, we see her quite often - in fact, I think I've seen her every weekend for the past three weeks - and we rarely announce our visits. However, sometimes I do mention to my mother that we're intending on popping over and sometime she'll mention to her mother that we're planning on coming over. Had my parents mentioned we were going round? Well yes, but only because I'd phoned and mentioned it to my dad and Nana happened to be there at the time. An impending visit simply shouldn't have pinged on her radar at all.
We explained what had happened. We pitched up at Nana's, she got me coffee and off we toddled to the living room. 'So, tell me what you've been up to,' said Nana, with her usual opening gambit. I told her about the delights of trying to put together the new bed and how I'd had to swear at someone from Ikea because the diagrams in the instructions bore no relationship to the pieces we'd got, and yes, they were allegedly the right instructions for the right pieces.
'Are you getting a lodger?' Nana asked rather pointedly.
'No...' I said.
We explained how we'd been down to the local tip with bag upon bag of crap from the house and how we'd rationalised our clothes (the adage that you wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time definitely applies to us!) and given the good stuff to charidee ('...but I don't like to talk about it, mate') and this now meant we could put the old bed - which is fine, just not big enough for my somnambulant flailing about) in the study.
'Are you getting a lodger?' Nana asked again.
'Well no, but there is someone new coming to live in our house,' said K___.
'I thought as much,' said Nana, very matter-of-factly. 'I've been thinking that would probably be the case for a few days now.'
'What? How did you know?'
'Oh, I don't know,' she shrugged. 'I just did. Well done to you both, that's lovely.'
She said the right words; she just wasn't very animated about it. It was like she didn't really care that much. I'm not suggesting she should have been bouncing off the walls simply because I wanted her too, but because that should have been her reaction. Where was the delight?
I was rather hurt, I must confess, but we got her talking about it and a possible reason for the lack of excitement was revealed. For a while now, my mother has been saying that Nana had said she didn't want to do another winter. At 91, with her eyesight very poor and limiting her mobility, she finds winters very hard now. We all thought that the news of a great grandchild would probably give her a reason to get through the winter. It seems we were wrong.
'I don't expect I will live through another winter,' she said, 'so I probably won't see your baby.'
Nana and I are very candid with each other. We always have been. We're not sentimental about most things and we like and respect it in each other. I like that she has always engaged with me on my level and she's always liked that I don't treat her age as having a great deal of importance. She's always been a friend and a confidant to me - and my brothers.
'Well,' I said, 'we would hate to think that you would hang on because you thought we wanted you to; if you want to go, then you must do it. But wouldn't you like to hold your great-grandchild?'
She made some non-committal noise but didn't really answer. The conversation continued and pregnancy was a part of it. I asked her whether she'd had morning sickness during her pregnancy and she said she couldn't really remember. She then related a tale she could recall about how she was pulled over in a two-seater car by the police for speeding and the rozzer had taken one look at her eight months pregnant stomach and let her go on her way. There were one or two details that struck me as strange. She said she'd not learned to drive until she was nearly 40 yet she had had my mother and my uncle by the time she was 30. I assumed this was just one of her lapses.
When we related this, my mother told me this story did indeed happen. Only not to Nana; it was Ma. And Nana hadn't learned to drive until she was nearly 50...
No one had told her our news. She just guessed or something but either way her own impending mortality makes it hard for her to get too excited. She's already decided she won't live through another winter.
So, there you go. I suppose you could argue this reveals something terribly profound about the cycle of life and death; that as one life ends, another takes its place.
It just makes me feel sad.
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