Inevitable loss of a child’s innocence
LAST week I was languishing on a chaise longue, felled by a nasty chest infection/borderline pneumonia. I was much too brave to burden you with the details Dear Reader but my cousin Beverley came to the aid of the party with a bunch of grapes and flask of chicken soup. We are united in multiple ways. Our late mothers were first cousins. They married first cousins who ended up being our fathers. We grew up a mile-and-a-half apart, had children within weeks of each other but have never been closer than we are right now as besotted, rhapsodising grandmas.
“It’s their innocence,” said Beverley. “I didn’t notice it as much with my children. I am utterly captivated by my grandchildren’s unblemished, untarnished sweetness.” I concurred of course and we lapsed blissfully into that grandmotherly cooing, boring beyond belief to everyone else yet riveting to us.
Days later the Other Half and I were scaling the ramparts in Carcassonne, south-west France. Schlepping disconsolately round France’s distinctly damp second most popular attraction after the Eiffel Tower, we sought refuge from the relentless rain in an unashamedly tourist-focused souvenir shop.
If you are a nougat fanatic may I direct you to Carcassonne. The place is crawling with the stuff. Local dentists must do a roaring trade. Could I inflict squares of lurid green tooth destroyers on my beloved grand-babies? I wouldn’t dare. I picked up a plastic Knights Templar sword, tabard and visor and prepared to lay down my euros. “Halt!” commanded my fiancé Ben. “Don’t even think about it. Zekey has no idea what a sword is for. He wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do with it.”
At two years and four months old my grandson is entirely nonviolent. He has never watched TV – apart from a couple of Peppa Pig episodes at Grandma Vanessa’s house – never seen a video game, never been smacked or seen anyone lift a hand against anyone else.
He is proof that there is no such thing as a violent gene. He doesn’t naturally pick up a banana and pretend to shoot it, think of hitting his baby sister or shout: “Bang bang. You’re dead.” As a gift a sword would have been as useless and mystifying to him as a lump of salt.
I know what BID farewell to complimentary food on short-haul British Airways flights. In an attempt to compete cost-wise with budget airlines, BA will now charge us for Mini Cheddars, tepid “instant” hot chocolate and tiny bags of polystyrene-tasting peanuts. With one stroke holiday passengers will be robbed of the last remaining vestige of travel glamour. As we reach into our already pillaged wallets for the fiver that covers nothing we will dimly remember the days when people dressed in their best outfits for flights, gazed in awe at the sumptuous stewardesses and disembarked feeling cosseted. Then we’ll plunge into a large G&T with slimline tonic and attempt to drown our sorrows. you’re thinking, though I can hardly bring myself to write this. It won’t last. He will toughen and roughen. It’s inevitable that nursery will bring exposure to aggression, biting, scratching, kicking and a host of horrible games involving obliterating the enemy or, as we used to growl in my youth: “I am a Dalek. I will exterminate you.”
Soon the cherub will be begging for a plastic sword, a lightsaber, a pop gun, a catapult, a bow and arrow, a Swiss army knife and a machete and thinking about tearing a worm in two and pulling the legs off a bluebottle.
“Such is life,” I hear you say, “and a good thing too. You don’t want him growing up a right sissy.” You have a point.
Innocence, like TVs and refrigerators, comes with built-in obsolescence. Allow me, though, to feel nostalgic for its loss in advance.