Grandpa Gave me the Moon

When I was 8 I watched the moon landing. I wasn’t actually alive for the real moon landing but my grandpa had a video and an old player for it in his shed. He was ‘saving it for a rainy day’. I was one of the few kids in my class who knew what a video was and wasn’t accustomed to DVDs and (soon) Bluray. It has occurred to me, since then, that my younger family members may only remember Netflix as a source of on-demand entertainment.

Cross-legged in front of a TV large enough for me to hollow out and climb inside, I asked Grandpa if I could be an astronaut.

‘You can be anything you would like to be, Amy. But know you have to be strong and fit to be an astronaut,’ he told me.

I considered this for a while, as children do, where you can see cogs turning and twisting around one another in their brains. concentration tickles at their brows and presses their lips.

‘I should definitely stay on the school cricket team then,’ I decided.

‘That sounds like a good plan,’ Grandpa replied. ‘No go pop that kettle on for me, it’s filled up, flick the switch and we can have some tea and toast.’

‘Mum said you can’t give me tea. It has caffeine.’ I frowned.

‘Well then, you can have a hot chocolate, deal?’ Grandpa smiled at me, showing his dentures that always freaked me out: they probably still would.

I never noticed the impact this moment would have on me, so fleeting almost, sandwiched between spelling homework and tea and toast.

I’m not an astronaut: but I could have been. There is no bitterness about this, and I don’t mean to sound disappointed because being an astronaut wasn’t for me, in the end.

My little brother, though, did get to be what he wanted when he was a kid. at 5-years-old he decided he wanted to be a nurse because the lady who looked after Grandpa was ‘super-duper-friendly-and-fun’ and who wouldn’t want to be ‘super-duper-friendly-and-fun’?

Adam would dress up as a nurse, and there was a lack of male nurse dress up in the local toy shops, which made us all laugh. I would dress up as an astronaut (naturally) and we would run around the house entertaining Grandpa until Mum came home from work. See Grandpa lived with us and it was great. Apart from when Mum came home and we had left the house a mess. Adam and I would be blamed even though it was definitely Grandpa’s fault for not telling us to tidy up – being the responsible adult.

Once dinner time rolled in, Mum would call, ‘Adam! Amy!’ Her voice echoed up the empty stairway and I could always hear Grandpa saying something like and this is why the kids would like walkie-talkies!

Mum never did get Grandpa his walkie-talkies, despite them being for ‘the kids’.

Both of us would come sprinting down the stairs and take up our seats at the well-loved kitchen table. Tucking into spaghetti, pizza or something else quick that vegetables could be added to with minimal fuss from Adam, we would chat about our day.

It seems idealistic described this way as if we never fought: like Adam and I didn’t threaten to tell Mum about something he/she did or didn’t do. It’s not like we never told Mum for her to say something like ‘how do you think that made your brother/sister feel?’ which would result in a sulky march back to our shared bedroom; since Grandpa moved into Mum’s room downstairs and Mum had moved into Adams room upstairs.

One night, Grandpa whispered, ‘Amy, come here.’

I slid into his room, careful not to spill my glass of water, knowing I wasn’t meant to still be awake.

‘What? You’ll get me into trouble,’ I replied, glancing at the direction of the stairs for in case Mum appeared.

‘It’s important.’ He beckoned me with a thin hand I had grown accustomed to steadying as Grandpa says oops steady parker! A slightly crass name for his Parkinsons.

‘Are you going to space?’ Grandpa asked.

‘If I stay on the cricket team and get strong,’ I shrugged as if this was obvious.

‘Good, now don’t you ever let anyone tell you that you can’t do anything and tell Adam the same.’

I nodded, listening to every word like the gospel – since we were not a religious family, I guess this was my gospel.

‘I’ll tell him, but tomorrow. I’m going to get told off,’ I pat Grandpa’s hand. ‘Love you, night night.’

I pulled the door closed behind me, staring at the ripples of water threatening to tip onto the carpet.

The next morning my Mum woke Adam and me early. I had heard some vague chatting and assumed that it was Grandpa’s nurse doing her daily rounds to help Mum out. But Mum didn’t look like she wanted to rush us into our school uniforms that morning. She just said:

‘Get dressed, quickly, please.’ And left our room.

We pulled on jeans and jumpers, groggy, me telling Adam he has to wear pants and socks because Mum said so and Adam saying she just said ‘get dressed’, she didn’t say what sort of clothes we were to wear. I yelled down the stairs:

‘Mum! Tell Adam he has to wear pants!’

‘Adam you have to wear pants,’ Mum shouts before returning to her phone call with a ‘sorry about that, kids, you know…’

Adam groaned and grabbed some slightly sad looking spiderman pants from our shared underwear draw before dragging himself to the bathroom so that his big sister wouldn’t look at his ‘weenie’.

I got myself dressed before he got back.

Just as Adam and I were pulling on socks and brushing hair, Mum appeared in our open doorway.

‘Kids,’ she starts, ‘can you both sit down please, I need to talk to you and I need you to listen very very carefully.’ Mum’s face looked sunken, completely unlike the night before when we were all playing scrabble (for kids) and Adam was spelling ‘because’ wrong. Mum even had a small glass of white wine.

We both sat, her solemn voice demanding us to submit into quiet attentiveness. Even Adam sat still for the duration of Mum’s speech.

She explained to us that, early that morning Grandpa was poorly. He probably would get better but he wouldn’t be living with us anymore because we couldn’t look after him.

I never cried. Not until we got home from the hospital. Then I sat on his bed, which he would never sleep in again, and waited for the tears to come. They came in waves and drowned out the sound of Adam playing with his stupid toys so loud I thought my head my burst because how can he be playing at a time like this.

I was very dramatic. But I think, even now, that it was appropriate.

My best friend was moving out because I couldn’t do enough. No one ever told me that it wasn’t my fault, or that it was okay to be upset. But I somehow knew that, when I got older, I would understand.

By 15 (he was a stubborn old man), I spoke at his funeral, telling the tale of how we would watch the moon landing together and how I could be whatever I wanted.

‘Children,’ he would say to Mum when no one thought I was listening, ‘children understand more than you think. I don’t know any other 8-year-old who would be more equipped to take me to the moon.’