HANNAH JONES
I THINK I grew up on a Sunday.
It was back in 2011 and I remember it so well. Before that point, I used to think everybody got a proper adult to pop up and right their many wrongs.
Just like when I cook, and somebody gently removes the pan from my hands. Or when I look after other people’s kids, and the look on their faces tells me that chocolate buttons and ice cream in their kids’ fizzogs aren’t really the best bedtime snacks.
Not that I’m a complete failure at what those delightful Americans call Adulting.
I’ve travelled alone, lived alone in strange places neither knowing a soul or where the buses go.
I’ve even got a husband and a mortgage and a dog.
Being an only child, though, someone who’s doted on with the kind of interest I’d usually assign to selecting toppings at the pizza counter in Asda, my every move has been digested, cogitated and talked about, as if everything I’ve ever done and am about to do is like taking new baby steps into the great unknown.
“Ooh Hannah, you don’t want to be doing it like that,” is a sentence I still hear daily from the grown-ups in my life who think they know better (in fairness, they usually do) and could do better (in fairness, they usually can).
Anyway, my mother still thinks I’m four. She’s got this old cine film of me performing (read: showing off ) as a kid, all rosy cheeks, fair hair and nose-picking abandon.
Eclair fingers, tree trunk legs and a pudding bowl Purdey haircut added to my allure and whenever she puts on that film (twice a day at the last count), she sits on a chair next to the telly, just close enough to reach out and touch my pudgy face with her fingers.
This is normally accompanied by an “aaahh”-ing sound, as her eyes close in a kind of reverie of those lost Baby Jones days.
It’s at this point that my father, ever the sentimentalist (not), calmly points out to her, “She’s over there!”, his tattooed digits pointing in my resigned direction.
It’s no surprise, then, that in my family I was known as Baby Jones until this fabled Sunday that I mentioned. After then, I became Big Baby Jones, something which I like to think of as a bit of a promotion before the top job.
This was the day that I, renowned in our family as being as caring as Hannibal Lecter, had to bedbath my grandmother.
There are some things, you see, which you never think you’re going to do.
Taking care of your loved ones when they become too frail or incapacitated to look after you being up there at the top of the list.
But my nan, obviously suffering from low sugar levels and forgetting that she’s ever met me, seemed to have mistaken my new hair-do for a halo.
She just wouldn’t let anyone else touch her. Not normally known for her warm demeanour, her steely reserve was softened by the realisation that she – get this – needed me. Me! Unmatured but cheesy me!
So I did it. I got to work with a flannel, whilst talking flannel no doubt, trying to convince both her and myself that I was excelling at my duty if not quite getting to the parts other more capable carers could reach without the aid of smelling salts and a blindfold.
I thought it was all going well too... until my auntie opened the bathroom door.
“Ooh Hannah,” she cooed, taking the flannel from me. “You don’t want to be doing it like that...”
And for once, this Baby Jones was glad to leave the grown-ups to their worldly-wise business.