Anne Vanderdonckt observes society, its evolutions, its progress, its inconsistencies. She shares with you her doubts, her questions, her enthusiasm. And if she makes fun of anything, it’s herself.
I was one of those kids who was always sick. Until I was five, I was spared from all microbes. But in kindergarten there was no escape. Measles & co, everything turned out to be a disaster. Also that ‘banal’ tonsil procedure, of which children especially remember the ice cream the next day. And of which I only remember a re-admission, black mouth mask and the ether vapor.
At such moments I only wanted one person: my grandmother on my mother’s side. She was self-employed, got up early, went to sleep late, but I was still allowed to sleep with her. My grandmother was a reassurance to me, something to hold on to. And she was to my young, inexperienced, panicked parents. My grandmother drew knowledge from her wisdom and spread it with the determination of one who had survived two wars and many more storms. She dared to stop a baby’s diarrhea with rice water. She made sure that my parents could catch their breath and temporarily leave the responsibility for a sick child to someone else. Because of course it was my parents who went with me to the hospital and to investigate. Was it my mother who cried silently when I couldn’t stand upright, the time of an X-ray. She may have told her parents, who listened and comforted her. But it was she who was confronted with the horror of a pale child who barely weighed anything and suddenly collapsed.
And my grandfather, meanwhile? He was banished to what was called the front room, where he slept uncomplainingly on a cot, squeezed between a desk and a cupboard full of canned goods, a Scalectrix race track, my brother’s fireman’s outfit, and all the junk that had no room for it. “I dreamed I was walking around in a toy store!” Strange that I suddenly remember that sentence of his. Because although very sensitive and deeply unhappy with the whole situation, existed grandpa’s role in providing lightness and cream pie. And especially to entertain my little brother, who was growing fast and for whom childhood illnesses were no more than a day out of school. It is only now, later in life, that I understand that behind Grandpa’s so-called immature behavior was grandeur and sacrifice.
A seriously ill child gets all the attention. One of the roles of grandparents is also to take care of the healthy offspring, which therefore takes second place.
The role of grandparents when a child is seriously ill is currently the subject of fascinating research at Odisee Hogeschool (read p. 16). A study that would probably have yielded the same results across the language border. Hence this testimony, which is above all a homage to the multifaceted and unconditional love that so many grandparents symbolize.
