In general I try in these essays to observe the remit suggested by my blog’s name—that is, learning and teaching-—but this one will be a little different. A while back a correspondent told me, intending a compliment, that what I wrote was not a “real” blog. Context suggested that he thought a “real” blog would deal in personal musings and reflections and not “covert lectures on medieval philology.” So this one will be short, self-indulgent, and personal. I propose a brief encomium extolling the joys of being a grandfather, with particular reference to two of our younger grandchildren, John Henry Putney Fleming (who will soon be eleven) and Hazel Elizabeth Fleming, who turned nine yesterday.
We have six grandchildren in all, five of them females, all of them delightful, ranging in age from nine to twenty-nine. Four of them, who live in New York, we get to see with frequency, especially as one of them doesn’t exactly live in New York anymore, having just completed her first year at—Princeton. Visits from John Henry and Hazel are naturally less frequent, but I have just enjoyed a most delightful one.
It is an ill wind that blows no good. Regular readers already know that my distinguished brother-in-law, the architectural historian John Newman, Joan’s only sibling, recently died in England. Joan of course flew over for the funeral, but not without some necessary thought to the logistics. She is sprier than I am, but still does not undertake international travel unadvisedly. Her trip was greatly eased because our elder son Richard was able to go also as companion and chauffeur. That left me as the problem. Just at the moment I was not able to go, or to do a few other needful things, even with some excellent home health care. So our younger son Luke, a professor in Montreal, flew down to spend a week with me here. We had a great time. He fairly recharged my batteries. He got me back into the library. He is starting to write a new book and got me to think I might possibly do the same. Possibly. Thus at the mere cost of seriously disrupting the lives of two families, and imposing yet further demands upon two already sufficiently occupied daughters-in-law, the Princeton gerontocracy continued apace.
The big payoff for me came over the weekend. It happened to include my birthday, for which the only semi-secret festive family plans had been overthrown by the death of Joan’s brother. But a hastily arranged Plan B was implemented. Luke’s wife Melanie drove down from Montreal with John Henry and Hazel to spend a couple of days before Joan’s homecoming, and then to return to Canada with Luke. That was a lot of driving for one geriatric birthday dinner.
The disappointing abandonment of earlier plans, Covid related, had meant that we had not seen the Montreal kids for too long a time. At their ages, both physical and personality development is rapid. Both had gained several inches of verticality and a significant if not precisely measurable depth of consciousness since we had last been together. They were bubbling over with surprising conversation, jokes, riddles, high jinks of all kinds. The inches we recorded in quasi-permanent pencil on the white wainscotting of the kitchen. We simply enjoyed the increment of mental agility. Our wild back garden seemed to them to rival all the provincial parks of Québec in which they have camped. They were fascinated by the rampant wildlife of our corner of suburban New Jersey, which includes a couple of foxes who ambulate up and down Hartley Avenue as though it were the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. They teased and spoofed us. Hazel, deploying Academy Award level skills, extracted from me, all unaware of her covert purpose, the information she and her mother (a professional caterer) would need to surprise me with what I can only call the birthday Cake of Ages. I do not mention any precise age. The weather was perfect for walking and working in the yard. It is the season for the battle of the bamboo. We attacked both the quick and the dead, the shooting tender spikes that move so fast you can hear them growing, and the old dead, hollow trunks, halfway to being flagpoles, whitening with age. Young John Henry threw himself into this task with all the energy of his Stakhanovite namesake. How could I possibly deserve—how could anyone—these beautiful and brilliant infants, shining mirrors of affection and promise? Heaven, even as imagined in the colors of Fra Angelico, is not easy for me to conceive. But that suggested by Jesus works for me: a place full of children. I’d like to think that the vibe would be more that of a kids’ project at a daycare center than a session of the Congress of Vienna.
Somewhere in the garden shed is a ghastly pewter plaque, which somebody paid five bucks for in the shop of an Interstate rest stop, with the stamped image of a geezer with a pipe and the legend: HAPPINESS IS BEING A GRANDFATHER. It’s one of those things somebody gives you to put in the garden shed. The presentation so tacky, but the message so true. And it all begins when they are mere babes in arms. You get to cuddle and rock them. And when they poop—hand ‘em back to Mom! The next thing you know they’re backpacking in Nepal or closing six-figure deals in some glass cage on the forty-seventh floor.
Joan and Richard returned from England in time to spend a few hours with the Montrealers before they had to get into their big Dodge van and headed back north. They reported a soft landing after a long day’s drive. The kids didn’t even miss a day of school, because it was a Canadian national holiday, Victoria Day, named after you-know-who. Only in Québec, where the politics are a little edgy, it’s the Journée des Patriots. But reports of changing the name to Meghan Day are baseless rumor.
