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To be or not to be a grandparent

30th December 2006 by Helena 1 Comment  

So far the paternal visit is going well. The only person he’s managed to fall out with is his sister, my aunt, by teasing her relentlessly about her capacity to exaggerate the merits or otherwise of a particular kind of rice/pasta/vegetable. She took her revenge by heading off for the day with my uncle and not coming home again until after midnight, waking me up in the process, so actually the only person who suffered was me. My father seemed unphased by her stomping off and much to my amazement agreed to go on a short outing with my mother and all three children. This is the fist time the children have been out with my parents and I was quite moved by the whole idea of it. They came back happy and smiling, my father described it all as a wonderful piece of theatre. But he refused to let them call him grandpa, preferring “uncle”. My father and aunt are obsessed with their age and although they are both closer to 100 than 50, act and look closer to the latter. Actually at times they act closer to five than 50.

Once the children had gone to bed my parents and I (that sounds so weird, this must be only one of a handful of occasions I have seen them together after they separated, rather like getting used to saying my husband when you’ve only been married a few days) sat around chatting about old friends and telling anecdotes about Truman Capote and Marylin Monroe – really lovely. I wonder how my life would have turned out if they’d stayed together. I suppose he’d have made me call him uncle too – as it is I call him by his first name, Benedetto. By the time we met up again when I was a teenager so daddy seemed inappropriate. BeaMy middle daughter, Beatrice pictured below, has gone one step further and calls him by his full name. “Benedetto Benedetti is up,” she announces every morning when she sees him shuffle past our bedroom. “Boungiorno Benedetto Benedetti,” she shouts. Most of the time he doesn’t hear her. He can deny being a grandparent but deafness is one sign of age it’s difficult to hide.


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One thought on To be or not to be a grandparent

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor in chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Helena is also working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in spring 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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