The Hand that Rocks the Cradle: Nesta Lewis

Often in low-level parenting I wonder, what is the point of this? Does anyone (the children) notice? Does it make any difference? 

I remember when SecondBorn was around three, chatting with a mother of an eleven year old boy on the school playground.  We were still being woken at ungodly hours, and she said smugly, 'Oh I got to sleep in till eight on Saturday, but then Charlie came in and I had to put my bra on so we could armwrestle.'  ?????  A flash of insight there, that life with a prepubescent boy wasn't going to be all boardgames and cross stitch.  And so it has proven to be. SecondBorn is an avid reader, true, but what he likes best is armwrestling, thumbwars, circuits round the garden on his bike, one on one basketball, active tussles. I'll be lying quietly on his bed finishing off the bedtime story, when there's a random cry of 'Wrestle her to the ground boys!' and the bedtime story is finished off in the way that HE likes best.  Fair enough.

Yesterday was the UK Royal Wedding. We're in Kenya. I'm a republican. I wish the royal family well but we'd decided to opt out of the low key streetparty and the formal reception to which we'd been invited - and had been thinking, about a month ago, of using D's four day weekend for us to go away on a farflung holiday.  But then we had an unexpected discussion, where D noted

'I think we should all watch the wedding.  It's part of our heritage, what we're passing on to the children, it matters that they feel part of it.  Don't you remember where you were when Charles and Diana got married?'

And suddenly I was plummeted back into childhood.  The excitement of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. Charles's Investiture as Prince of Wales and of the excitement of being hoisted onto shoulders as he passed, and he blew me, Welsh costumed dwt of a three year old, a kiss. Street parties, bonfires, flags and bunting, special coins and mugs handed out at school, meringue dresses, fanfares, red white and blue cakes, when in Swansea, in 1977 multicoloured cake dough was true cutting edge technology!

And there's the awfulness of Diana's death. Of deep down, wanting to be of support for those motherless boys, for that small boy, now grown, of whom my most powerful memory is him following behind the coffin of his Mum, infront of the world's media.

And amidst all my questioning whether a hereditary head of state is the imagery we want for today's Britain, of indignance at lifestyle and inequality, there's a deep visceral fondness for the royal family. Which I trace back, if I look, to early, early childhood memories.  Knee-high to a grasshopper, sitting on a pouffe, hours spent playing rummy with Aunty Nesta, as she talks me through the latest doings of our kin, and of royalty. Avid Daily Express reader she knew them all, knew their every move. Cared, deeply.  And as I look back, 40 years on, I still know my Princess Michael of Kents from my Princess Margarets. Still feel, somewhere, that it matters to be part of this.

So last Friday after I'd watched the whole service in real time, the children were yanked unceremonially from their playdates, and we sat down together as a family to watch the highlights.  Their knowledge and understanding was at a different level to mine at the same age. Secondborn 'Why are those men wearing wigs?' 'No, no, they're special bearskin hats, those soldiers wear them to accompany the Queen.'  Like watching a video of distant relations, they got inducted into telling their Prince Charles from their Prince Philips, their Princess Beatrices and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, to the pomp and ceremony of how their country does big occasions.

And did it matter? Well, in the end it did to me. I was glad to wish the couple well. It mattered that we watched it together as a family. It mattered that we felt part of something going on in our home country, that we didn't feel semidetached, that our children learnt something of their heritage.  It mattered too because Aunty Nesta would have been comforted that twenty plus years after her death I still hear her silent commentary, 'Chware teg to Prince Charles', 'Fair play to Prince Charles'.  'Ooh now Catrin, that's Princess Beatrice, you know, shes... now.' And it mattered to realise that those hidden moments spent with children, the games of rummy, the idle chatting, the words and language, the sharing of what matters to us, lives on, runs deep, bubbles forth unexpectedly, long after we ourselves have gone.