My Grandad was in town last week. All eighty-six years of him. And to quote a massive cliche, he's still got it. Sharp jokes, flirtatious behaviour with waitresses, and a part in his hair that'd put Moses to shame.
I hadn't spent a lot of time with him for a few years, since leaving Oz in 2004. He and my Nanna did make a brief sojourn to Ireland where I drove them around the country side. It was essentially a nap on wheels though, with the pair of them occasionally waking for a coffee and cake stop (as is the wont of old people), as I twisted and turned through southern Ireland trying not to crash into their "quaint stone walls". My favourite memory of the trip was my Grandads wanderings, where we'd track through the streets only to find him chatting so some distant relative of a Christian Brother that my Grandad once met. This happened repeatedly.*
I spent some time with Grandad as my Nan got towards the end earlier this year. His spirit was irrepressible. In what was probably his finest quotable hour, he rocked up to the hospital ward to announce that outside it was "cold as a Christian charity". He told us Nanna had instructed him that if he was going to drive to the hospital after the function at the village, that he'd better not drink. "So I walked." And when he called up for test results from an unhelpful nurse he said down the line "Give it to me straight, Sister!"
I've got alot of respect for the old boy, as I reckon we all should, given their vast life wisdom (even if it is occasionally mixed in with chat about 'the darkies'.). But as we sat enjoying meals and coffees together over the last week, I was a bit torn. Do I let him just chat away, regaling tale after tale as it comes to him? Or do I interject with my opinions? Cos the thing is, I don't want him to think I'm some baggage relative that brings nothing to the table, so he then has to carry the conversation for the both of us. But at the same time, nothing I have to say has any gravity considering my relative life experience. Isn't his story about chasing an emu for CSIRO in the outback for miles only to catch it, tag it, and it fall down dead: Isn't that way more important than my discovery that you can make cheese on toast by turning the toaster on its side? Surely his story about a great uncle who helped map a pass through the Blue Mountains holds more weight than my tale of getting off at Museum station, only to discover the museum is actually closer to a totally different station? I know for a fact that his friends passing away means way more than my mates passing out ever will.
I guess the presence of those who have amassed huge amounts of life experience should be humbling. In the same breath, it should also be entertaining and frustrating. Cos that's how life is. Humbling. Entertaining. Frustrating. And old people are full of life. And we might as well enjoy that of them before their cup runeth over.
*The only other time I've been faced with this predicament (besides trying to leave a festival with a pilled up mate who insists of having deep conversations with every one they walk past. We've all been there. In both roles.) was when I travelled around northern Spain with my Dad. Despite me insisting the only language I spoke was conversational Portuguese, my old man decided I spoke fluent Spanish, as he subsequently told all manner of old Spaniard as he dragged em back towards me to answer his trivial question about the kind of stone in the arches of the church. What a mission. Oh, and in case you're wondering, es piedra arenisca.
I hadn't spent a lot of time with him for a few years, since leaving Oz in 2004. He and my Nanna did make a brief sojourn to Ireland where I drove them around the country side. It was essentially a nap on wheels though, with the pair of them occasionally waking for a coffee and cake stop (as is the wont of old people), as I twisted and turned through southern Ireland trying not to crash into their "quaint stone walls". My favourite memory of the trip was my Grandads wanderings, where we'd track through the streets only to find him chatting so some distant relative of a Christian Brother that my Grandad once met. This happened repeatedly.*
I spent some time with Grandad as my Nan got towards the end earlier this year. His spirit was irrepressible. In what was probably his finest quotable hour, he rocked up to the hospital ward to announce that outside it was "cold as a Christian charity". He told us Nanna had instructed him that if he was going to drive to the hospital after the function at the village, that he'd better not drink. "So I walked." And when he called up for test results from an unhelpful nurse he said down the line "Give it to me straight, Sister!"
I've got alot of respect for the old boy, as I reckon we all should, given their vast life wisdom (even if it is occasionally mixed in with chat about 'the darkies'.). But as we sat enjoying meals and coffees together over the last week, I was a bit torn. Do I let him just chat away, regaling tale after tale as it comes to him? Or do I interject with my opinions? Cos the thing is, I don't want him to think I'm some baggage relative that brings nothing to the table, so he then has to carry the conversation for the both of us. But at the same time, nothing I have to say has any gravity considering my relative life experience. Isn't his story about chasing an emu for CSIRO in the outback for miles only to catch it, tag it, and it fall down dead: Isn't that way more important than my discovery that you can make cheese on toast by turning the toaster on its side? Surely his story about a great uncle who helped map a pass through the Blue Mountains holds more weight than my tale of getting off at Museum station, only to discover the museum is actually closer to a totally different station? I know for a fact that his friends passing away means way more than my mates passing out ever will.
I guess the presence of those who have amassed huge amounts of life experience should be humbling. In the same breath, it should also be entertaining and frustrating. Cos that's how life is. Humbling. Entertaining. Frustrating. And old people are full of life. And we might as well enjoy that of them before their cup runeth over.
*The only other time I've been faced with this predicament (besides trying to leave a festival with a pilled up mate who insists of having deep conversations with every one they walk past. We've all been there. In both roles.) was when I travelled around northern Spain with my Dad. Despite me insisting the only language I spoke was conversational Portuguese, my old man decided I spoke fluent Spanish, as he subsequently told all manner of old Spaniard as he dragged em back towards me to answer his trivial question about the kind of stone in the arches of the church. What a mission. Oh, and in case you're wondering, es piedra arenisca.
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