In Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book, Grandmother and her grand-daughter Sophia co-exist on a tiny island in the Finnish Gulf as Father works away. Mother is dead, but none of that is spoken about explicitly, except for one mention and whatever the reader wants to catch in between the lines: Sophia’s anger at the mortality of small bugs, her fear of a storm while Father is at sea, her many questions around Grandmother’s finitude. There is so much freedom in this relationship, a freedom I can’t quite recognise from my own experience as a city girl; a freedom that I can only slightly relate to my own summers roaming free on the beach. But Sophia’s freedom is perfect: the island seems huge from her perspective, summer is never-ending, each day comes with a new adventure. Different summers overlap and become one in the book – Sophia and her grandmother have an indefinite age that makes the book so much more poignant. As if childhood and old age were processes, not a finite moment that can be defined in time.
I had a great-aunt growing up, Zia Geppa, who was pretty much my only grandmother. She took care of my brother and me whenever our parents traveled, and she took us in, and to a seaside apartment she rented not far from Naples. My brother and I spent weeks with her when school was over and my parents worked. She bought us more ice cream than we were ever allowed and cooked parmigiana di melanzane, spending hours in the heat frying the aubergines. She took us to the trampolines and the seaside. We watched TV, read, and did as we pleased. Summer days were long, not too adventurous, but fun. Time went by, we all grew older, my brother and I moved on and moved away. Zia Geppa slowly fell into what I now consider depression – something I could not name until I read something about depression being the most prevalent mental illness among people over 60 that my colleague Tanmoy Goswami wrote when we were at The Correspondent. I wrote Zia Geppa letters, and I called, but the magic of the problem-free summer days of my childhood was gone. When I lived in Ecuador, I bought her a beige alpaca blanket to keep her warm. She kept the blanket with her at the retirement home where she spent the final years of her life. When she died, I was not in Naples, and I didn’t see her off. My mum sorted through her belongings, and the beige blanket came back to me. It now travels with me.
The relationship between our elders and our youngest has been studied a lot. Alison Gopnik, a cognitive development scientist and philosopher that studies children, dedicates a lot of time to grandparents. She says grandmothers are unique to humans because in other species menopause is not a thing: females die when their fertility ends. One possible theory goes like this: grandparents help parents care for young children, allowing them to have a longer, playful childhood and to become smarter along the way. (Lynn Berger wrote a beautiful essay about grandparents, by the way, with more of the science too.)
But how likely are these relationships with our mobile lives? My son Lorenzo, for one, has no grandparents near him, no daily contact. Last week, in my Zoom meetings with founding members, I spoke to Catherine and then to Bonnie about libraries as centres where different generations can come together, where the elderly and the youngest can have regular meetings. I’m not talking about random encounters in the park, but about meetings where children and older people can safely establish genuine relationships, regardless of blood.
There have been several experiments connecting the elderly and children, including those who have been transformed in the TV series Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds (it was originally in the UK, but now also in Australia – thanks to Catarina, a member of this community, for sharing a link to the show!).
This week, as I read about Sophia and Grandmother and cherished the honest and fun exchanges they had, I want to dedicate this newsletter to Zia Geppa, for those sweet summer moments she created in my childhood, for the lazy cicada-filled afternoons, for all the rides to the trampolines, one more time. I hope Lorenzo will build his own sweet summer memories with his nonni.
By the way, if you’re interested in The Summer Book, you may like to hear that Tove Jansson was the Swedish-speaking Finnish creator of The Moomins cartoon, and the film on her life is about to be released in English. I can’t wait to watch it!
Before I go, let me ask you about your own intergenerational experiences. There are a few grandparents and great-uncles among you readers, and I would love to hear what your exchanges with the youngest around you are like and how the middle generations (i.e. us parents) may help facilitate them. Hit reply to this email or log in on the website and add a comment at the bottom of the story. I look forward to hearing more!
And one small update! Last week I shared a link to a piece denouncing the Olympic Committee in Japan for not allowing athletes who are mothers to travel to Japan with the children they are breastfeeding. Well, that has been reversed, and it makes me very happy!
What I’ve been reading
This story on the BBC about the Afro-Colombian midwives who manage to help women give birth at home – even in neighbourhoods run by armed gangs. In 2017, the Colombian government declared Afro-Colombian midwifery a national heritage practise to recognise and preserve the women’s knowledge. There are some 250 midwives along the Colombian Pacific region, and their role has been crucial, especially in remote areas during coronavirus lockdowns, as this other story illustrates.
What I’ve been listening to
This podcast episode, The Paper Doll Club, is one of the best I’ve heard in a long time. For many reasons. First of all, the subject matter hits close to home: paper dolls, the ones you can cut out and dress up. My mum loves paper dolls and has a vast collection of them, so I grew up marvelling at them. What’s great about the podcast is that it starts from a simple toy, paper dolls, explains why they are not just another toy and goes deep into the lives of the people who played with them and created them. The main character, David Wolfe, grew up loving paper dolls in 1950s Ohio – secretly so. Paper dolls helped him develop a talent in fashion design and later helped him come out. I highly recommend it!
What I’ve been watching
At least 68 countries consider same-sex sexual relations illegal. More than half of those countries have one thing in common: they were once British colonies, and their penal codes include crimes under the label of “unnatural offences” that were first introduced by colonisers into the Indian Penal Code in 1860 under Section 377 and then, across the British Empire. “377 – The Law on which the Sun Never Set” is a short documentary by Lola García-Ajofrín, a Spanish journalist working for Outriders, that focuses on the effects that a colonial law continues to have nowadays on LGBTQI+ people in Sri Lanka. What’s most touching about this film is the story of a father who accepted his son when he came out – despite all the societal pressures.
Who’s been inspiring me
Catalan feminist journalist (and mother) Esther Vivas has an Instagram account that I find quite refreshing. She is the author of Mamá desobediente. Una mirada feminista a la maternidad (Disobedient Mum. A Feminist Perspective on Motherhood), published in Spanish in 2019 – another book on my reading list. What I love about her Instagram is that she puts on red lipstick and dances, sharing provocative ideas about motherhood and trying to shake off old beliefs. Like this post with I Will Survive as a soundtrack, stressing how much women have the right to decide regarding issues around motherhood. It’s in Spanish but worth checking out regardless of whether you speak the language!
What members have been saying
Last week I celebrated our first six months together. The email I received from Catherine as a response touched me so deeply that I would love to share some of her words: “Your focus is on vulnerability, and on our care and respect for our collective responsibility to nurture the first 1,000 days. The stakes are high, the imperative educational content is critical, and your role includes modeling within the community how we village ourselves together to do better on this frontier, regardless of the parts we play. Therefore, you reach us through the most appropriate intimacy, avoiding sensationalism, but establishing connections that keep readers returning. And the combination of robust, meaningful newsworthy content, offered in community, and delivered in a personal way by somebody who keeps the focus on the content, even when self-disclosing … I think that’s rare and special.” Thanks to Catherine, and to the rest of you, for getting me. ❤️
With love and care,
Irene
📣 Catarina Fernandes Martins, a member of this community, edited and improved this newsletter with lots of love, logging in from Castelo Branco, Portugal. Thanks, Cata! (If there are mistakes, they are my fault, not hers!)
📸 Photo credits and alt-text: Mary Blackwey on Unsplash, old man sitting beside little child on a bench near the sea.