Everyone needs alone/me time. It’s essentials to mental health.
Parents, specially, can find it difficult to carve out a bit of time to just be “me”; not “mom” or “dad”, someone’s partner, a worker, a friend or any of the hundreds of roles a person is expected to fulfil.
There’s no let-up in parenting and most people work hard to be the best parent they can be. That’s a Good Thing.
For some, there is a magical group who help carry the load, even if it’s for a bit: grandparents.
Caring grannies and grandads are delighted to mingle with the little munchkins. They can enjoy a blissful visit or stayover, after which gran and gramps can simply hand them back.
Gogos forced into the parental role by death, illness, a faraway job or a lost soul aren’t included in the “give them back” category: these often elderly people need time-outs even more than stressed-out parents, but there’s no one to provide that precious space and time.
Here on the couch we have just one “grandchild”. It started as a joke. My lovely young daughter-(not)-in-law Ash rescued and resuscitated, with hours of care and round-the-clock hand feeding, a baby speckled mousebird who clung to her and squealed whenever she left their home to pop into mom’s. He soon started visiting too.
Raptor, as the little attachment was named, like any inquisitive child growing stronger, wanted to explore, first with his beak and then to spread his wings a bit.
Over the months, he has taken rather a liking to granny. Whenever they are in the house, he visits the keyboard, the bookshelves and the old lady’s long hair which makes a lovely, warm nesty snuggle spot. He could sit there for hours if he wasn’t intent on biting a lip, a nice saggy eyelid or neck. For such a little bird, his beak is a powerful thing. It’s then that gran gets fed up, declares it’s home time and hands him back to mom.
For the last couple of months, he has started going out on his own, flying around the jungle garden and tweeting from among the trees. Like any good mom and gran, Ash and I have learned his specific tweet. I also know when he’s been doing his flyabout because Ash whistles to call him ‒ and he flies back to her head, shoulder or shirt.
It has been a privilege watching him growing up and “playing” outside. It may be more common than we realised, but it has astonished us that a wild bird has become so attached to his humans that he opts to stay instead of flying away. Perhaps that will change when girls start to appeal to him. We are trying to brace for it.
Now, the clever little fellow has a new trick: he has learned he can fly to granny on his own. No need to wait for mom to visit.
It can be heart attack-inducing when gran is concentrating on a screen or miles away in “me” time. He’s a quiet flier and suddenly appears from nowhere, long tail flaring and a little flap of wings folding to land on my head.
He gets to stay as long as he doesn’t bite, but it made me think that human grandparents are lucky kids can’t fly.
- Slogrove is news editor
The Independent on Saturday