I’ve been thinking a lot about grandchildren lately, about my grandchildren in particular, but also about grandchildren in general. I never pined to be a grandmother, although I know some women do, but now feel sorry for people who do not have grandchildren, and sorry for children who do not have grandparents: I have five grandchildren and remember my three grandparents fondly and well. The Greeks, who have a saying or a wish for everything, say that your grandchildren are ‘twice your children.’
Some people take this to mean that you love your grandchildren twice as much, but other opinions I think are more accurate: when you have grandchildren it is like having your children for a second time. And this is true: memories return, resemblances are noticed, and the whole process is often unexpected. And can be said to come in two parts: there is the practical matter of genes being passed on, and the emotional one involving attachment to two generations.
But I also think some grandparents remember their own childhood: I know I do, believing that childhood never goes away, in the sense that its influence always lingers. I remember a simpler time, when my sister and I were free to roam our small township, climb trees and monkey bars, and go to the swimming-pool on our own. The only fear we knew was that of not noticing a snake in time. But I was not much more than a child myself when I read Wordsworth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’ for the first time. In this poem, started in 1802, finished in 1804, and published in 1807, Wordsworth explores the loss that is incumbent upon the process of growing up. It took some time for critics to appreciate the philosophical basis of the poem, but the whole work is now considered a masterpiece.
The child, Wordsworth thought, is able to witness the divine in nature, but gradually this ability fades. Whereas once everything seemed apparelled in celestial light/ the glory and the freshness of a dream, four stanzas end with the questions Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? We know this development happens to us all: I remember my paternal grandmother saying of my father. Poor Willie! Life was a beautiful dream, and then he had to wake up. She intuited that at some point Wordsworth’s shades