Maybe things haven’t changed as much as I thought.
Every Monday night in my childhood home, my mother would write to her parents and her parents-in-law.
It was a weekly ritual and at the end of it, she would call us in to add our little gem at the bottom of the letter.
I was less than enthusiastic. Just what did I want to say to my grandparents who we only visited every second year and who would tell me that I ‘looked like my mother’ and ‘hadn’t I grown’?
My mother would prompt me by suggesting effusive thanks for the Christmas or birthday gift (brown paper packages tied up with string – and no Mary Poppins in sight), or how I spent the money they sent.
That usually warranted a whole page and so I was almost glad that this only happened twice a year.
And so I would resort to the usual standby. And that was what I had had for dinner.
This I could rattle off in a few sentences and leave the letter-writing for another week.
I can only hope that my weekly update on what I ate for dinner may have been looked upon fondly.
But it seems this grandparent bond of meal discussions has transcended the generations and, despite a dramatic transformation in communication, it remains a common theme.
I am lucky that I get to see my grandchildren on an almost nightly basis. And no, I can’t hug them, but I do get to spend some time with them in their loungeroom, albeit on a mobile phone.
Ironically, given the time difference between Brisbane and Berlin, my daughter usually Facetimes me around their breakfast time and our dinner time.
So we usually relate what we are having for dinner and they are having for breakfast.
If they’ve already eaten, my daughter has simply to show me the floor and I can see quite well the remnants of the feeding frenzy of two three-year-olds and one two-year-old.
We don’t have a lot to chat about, but we chat anyway, about the minutiae of life stuff.
Unlike the letter writing era, I feel my grandchildren actually know me. They gleefully show me their projects, their sticker charts and often their naked backsides on an almost nightly basis.
And all this due to evolving technology.
