The comfort of the old in the face of the new

Grandpa's new toy

new hand touches old one

An old hand is gripped by a new hand and a new baby meets its two uncles who have travelled miles to visit her.  Grandpa gets a new i pad which Mike sorts out for him.   The teeny tiny child is transported in a huge travelling spacecraft- like incubator by ambulance with an entire neonatal team and gets closer to home.  Two of her uncles, one from Jakarta, one from Dubai, make journeys of several thousand miles to visit her and are able to hold her.  They are amazed that her head, just the size of a small orange is so tiny lying in the palm of their large hands and her whole hand is smaller than the tip of their large grown up fingers.  Old friends make the journey from London to join us all as we celebrate a late Christmas, New Year and probably an early Easter all in one weekend, feasting on all the favourite family dishes.  Everything good about our lives is toasted with a huge magnum of champagne sent by uncle number 3 from Singapore.  Come back soon that Uncle Bun, uncle number 3 to meet the smallest and newest member of the family.  We all take the dogs out for a walk round  the long circuit taking us as always out of the gate, turn left, keep going over 2 fields, over the bridge, right, left, down the long field, past the Church and back home with 4 or 5 dogs.  

Uncle number 4

Uncle number 3

And then, a final lunch and the weekend comes to an end.  Nothing you can do to delay the departures, no stamping your foot or weeping crocodile tears.  Back go the friends to London, off to Heathrow goes Jakarta boy in the rather small car belonging to our family giant who somehow looks as if he should be in something bigger. Back to the hospital go the new parents and this old granny finds a certain comfort in washing up the old pans left from the last meal and then mopping the floor whilst thinking philosophical thoughts about the way everything comes and goes, comes and goes, appears and disappears and even though you think you have something to do with what happens, it is clear that you don't have a great role, you just get to watch the show moving onwards.   Even the newest and tiniest baby has moved out of its spaceship life and is in a cot and is wearing clothes and there are newer and tinier babies taking her place in the spaceship station at the big Cambridge hospital.