They will think I’m her Grandad!

Now who's a dinosaur? (Image from http://www.cartoonbucket.com/?s=fred+wilma+and+pebbles)

I married Natalie when aged 62. We both agreed that we wanted children, although we didn’t think it would take this long! In July of this year, the pregnancy test finally came out positive, and a scan confirmed what we hoped for: that we finally had a child on the way. Last week, we discovered that the child would, with a high degree of probability (the sonographer couldn’t see everything but gave it a 90% chance), be a girl!

62 feels quite different from 69, which is what I will be when she is born in March. Nevertheless, I am ready for the challenge and excited! I have spent a lifetime observing marriage and parenthood in the lives of others and, in my 60s, these things have finally happened to me. One can speculate on why it took so long, but the fact is that it has, and Natalie is the long-awaited love of my life. There will be another love of my life in a cot in a few months, God willing!

I saw a man of about my age with a little girl toddler today at the supermarket. I instantly assumed that they were grandfather and granddaughter and caught myself thinking it with some amusement. If I, of all people, make that assumption, then surely most people will likewise make that mistake when I step out with my daughter. I really don’t mind if they do. When Natalie and I went to inspect the wedding venue back in 2015 with Natalie’s mother, the person we were dealing with asked whether the bridegroom would be coming along later to have a view too! She was embarrassed when she found out that he was already there, but we saw the funny side of it. It was an obvious conclusion for her to reach.

My great-grandfather Isaac had a second family back at the end of the nineteenth century; he already had one daughter from a previous marriage but in his 60s girls appeared (three, I think) and then my grandfather when Isaac was 72. Isaac was born in 1823, 199 years before the birth of my daughter in 2022, his great-great-granddaughter. And before you say it – no, I don’t intend to try and match his four! He must have had a strong constitution.

(Cutting purchased on e-bay) We just love the headgear!

Isaac received the Maundy money at the age of 92 from Queen Alexandra the Queen Mother in 1915, and was selected for a photo (above, with my great-grandmother Mary) by the Daily Mirror, surely because of his surname. My grandfather Percy was also awarded the Maundy money many years later. Can I emulate them? These days it is given to an elderly person for service to the local community or Church. So 25 years looking after the Chapel of Our Lady of the Crag might give me a chance, especially as Knaresborough is the place where the first Maundy money was given by King John, who frequented the castle here. The original Maundy money was given to the poor. Surely Robin Hood would have applauded King John for that!

There will be a great many situations where I will be identified as a grandfather: parents’ evenings at school, on the side-lines yelling my encouragement at sports, pushing swings and roundabouts. I will become the very boring old father who constantly points out that he remembers the foggy 1950s, shillings and pence, the Berlin Wall, and the first single of the Beatles. Not quite the war, but everything in between! And baby daughter will be reminded by everyone of all ages that they suffered a pandemic just before she was born (I very much hope I am right in writing ‘before’).

Baby daughter – who hasn’t got a name yet but much pondering is occurring as we speak – will have cousins ranging from 36 years older to 6 weeks older (Natalie’s brother’s partner is pregnant too). The adult cousins can’t wait to meet her, and she will be badly spoiled at family gatherings. She will only have one blood grandparent alive and one step-grandparent, but plenty of aunts and uncles.

We will face all the worries that give twenty-first century parents sleepless nights: how to keep the internet at bay? When and how to allow a phone? What will happen to the world’s climate that we are bequeathing her? There are also the age-old worries that span generations: how to spot signs of anxiety in your child and help them through it? How to manage the process of growing up so that she is accepted by her peer group but without taking on the trappings of adulthood too early? And the need for the Me Too movement reminds us that it is still tough and sometimes dangerous to be a female.

But right now we are focusing on the joys and not the worries, just like expectant parents all the world over. We are imagining a child who loves music, sport and games, learning, other people, fun and laughter, Christmas and Hallowe’en. And given the world we live in and its challenges, my vision is of a daughter who herself has a vision; I would rather have a Greta Thunberg than a Kim Kardashian (I’ll be too old to enjoy it if she becomes a multi-millionaire anyway!).

I won’t be the first parent with a host of expectations but, just like every other parent, I will have to learn to keep loving her when she doesn’t live up to them, and to accept her just as she is. And one of the most important aspects of parenthood is patience: you never give up on hoping for the best and you must remember that life is a marathon and not a sprint.

If I claim that she is miles ahead of all other children in her age group, or that she has uttered complex words and phrases before she is two, or that her development s quite remarkable, and that she is bound to be a concert pianist, Nobel Prize-winning scientist, or global stateswoman, please forgive me. All those of you who are parents: I had to bear with you doing all these things, and now it’s my turn! Love is the father of exaggeration (but not, despite appearances, the grandfather).