The baby’s progress is the main event when Nana and Grandad arrive. In the few months since they last saw her, she’s started walking and even, after a fashion, talking. They marvel at all the progress we’ve lost sight of through close observation.
When it comes to walking, she’s steady on her feet and growing more comfortable in shoes. Or should I say ‘schuuus’, since this is how she refers to her foot coverings, oh, someway north of 400 times a day. This one word comprises a sizeable percentage of her vocabulary, which now stretches to about a dozen words.
In truth, she’s merely become competent at syllables – cats are ‘cuh’, dogs ‘duh’, etc – but the real showstopper is her contribution to my rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I get her started by singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle, Little…’ to which she adds a delighted ‘sta’ at the end. I chime back in with, ‘How I wonder what you…’ and she applies a tense, four-second pause before uttering a euphoric, and almost inaudible, ‘ah’ in response. It might not amount to free-flowing speech, but it’s still impressive and we cheer accordingly. If nothing else, her growing aptitude for call and response verbiage would make her an excellent member of the Beastie Boys.
Our daughter has a two-week break from childcare and Grandad and Nana have come over to provide invaluable – in fact, miraculous – help minding her while we work. As with any time Sean and Marian visit, they prove so bafflingly, dutifully helpful I feel mildly guilty for their entire stay.
When not minding our 18-month-old, they clean our house until every surface proffers a reflection. Cupboards are reorganised and the fridge deloused. Pots we barely recognise are presented to us from the back ends of cupboards we have avoided for years, then either sterilised or binned with the ruthless efficiency mort typical of a Swiss hitman. A dresser is polished. A lamp is fixed. Every spare item of clothing is pressed, discarded or donated until our wardrobes no longer hold clothes designed for slimmer figures, many of which we haven’t worn since Brexit.
Outdoors, too, we are shamed by their efforts. Sean, an avid gardener, did a beautiful job last time he was here – and I did try to keep it up. By this, I mean I’ve done precisely one bit of gardening since then and it resulted in flames coming out of our electric lawnmower. He helps us replace this – even assuring me, unconvincingly, that it was a fault with the model – and tackles the garden with more grace than we deserve; its weeds routed, its flowers enlivened.
In short, they tackle so many of our long-gestating chores, it’s as if we are a pair of well-loved local slobs whose neighbours have reached out to a daytime TV show to help us get our lives in order. We repay them in dinners and egregious repetitions of gratitude, but it doesn’t seem enough. My wife says a true show of gratitude would be to pay it forward and commit to doing the same for our own kids when the time comes.
I ponder this for a moment, consider my existing skills and shudder. ‘Or I can write them an article or something,’ I say, hopefully.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly is out now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Buy a copy from guardianbookshop at £14.78
Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeats
