I am listening to the radio and someone is talking about old people being in homes and how now due to the lockdown their family and friends can’t visit them. A man was saying how his grandma had just died, they couldn’t have a funeral and his grandfather had gone back to the old folks home with out her and now no visitors. That sounds so traumatic, for everyone.

There are many reasons we moved in with my father. Economic. Social, my mum died 3 years before we moved in, Physical, he’s in his 80s…

It’s not all plain sailing of course. Helena has a strong personality and is a very different generation, she is very much of the opinion that she should be heard and Dad was brought up more in the be seen and not heard sort of thing. He is of that generation who missed out, who had absent fathers due to work, no warm role models. My father did alright, he did the first playcentre course and was one of the few men to do so (still one of the few, there were no men at the courses I did). There are things they disagree over, like the cutlery. She wants him to put it in a special drainage pot and he wants to do ot the way he always has. I had to teach Helena the word precedent when she was very young and here she sees a manifestation of being intransigent. 

The world of I want Helena be able to be able to fit in to is a multigenerational model, where her friends can range in age like mine do. Helena does mostly, like the gardening group of card carrying pensioners who she likes hanging out with, and all her little friends. I want her to be kind, generous and allow for difference, and there is so much difference between generations. I don’t get why we no longer live in multigenerational homes, why we put old people in homes… 

I didn’t of course think of pandemic and lockdown  when we moved in but I’m sure glad we are here for him and he is here for us. I like our bubble.