Yesterday, I had to go into hospital for an operation to repair an inguinal hernia. Today is one of the days my wife and I look after our grandchildren. My daughter emailed me to say that she had explained to two year old Noah that they wouldn't be going to grandma and grandpa's today because grandpa was poorly.
Naturally, Noah wanted to know why. With admirable matter-of-factness my daughter told him that my 'guts were coming out' and I 'needed an operation to put them back in again'. He replied, 'Oh, is that grandpa's hernia?' He had been hearing with interest about this hernia for some weeks. (He is completely fascinated by the workings of the human body.) When my daughter confirmed that this was indeed, the much-discussed hernia he wanted to know whether Grandma also had a hernia and was most disappointed to learn that she didn't.
I can clearly recall how I spent all of my childhood and young adult years in a furious battle to be seen as an individual, someone with his own distinct identity who would be taken seriously as a person. Now I find I am delighted to be regarded as part of a 'set', like one of a couple of senior dolls with matching repairable hernias.
For me, being a grandparent means existing in a state of barely-subdued ecstasy and not even being cut open with a knife and then used as an example in an Early Years biology lesson can diminish that.
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