Julie Jay: Ted’s recent phase of eating my phone means most calls end in a Moby Dick-like terror

Comedian Julie Jay, from Brandon, West Kerry pictured at her home.

Julie Jay

COMEDIAN

Ted loves his grandparents very much, and though we don’t get to see them on the daily, the advent of FaceTime has meant they are but a speed-dial away. That said, Ted’s recent phase of eating my phone means most of these conversations end in a Moby Dick-like terror for my parents as they are swallowed up into a mouth full of toddler teeth. From about four months, Ted has had a full set of comedian Rob Beckett gnashers, and while I am exceptionally proud of his pearly whites, I feel a kiss rather than an incisor should be what we are working towards as a sign-off.

In seeing our parents interact with our kids, we get to appreciate them for what they are and what they have always been: people just doing their best. Such is the love for Ted that my mother now jumps to his calls for ‘Mammy’ with an ‘I’m here, pet’. Safe to say, she is making Janet Jackson look like a teen mum one confusing response at a time.

Often I remind myself that when I was Ted’s age, my parents were feeling the pinch of gross inflation and a Taoiseach telling us to tighten our belts when the belts were already bordering on Bridgerton-corset level restrictive.

‘I don’t remember a baby ever being in this house’, Dad said last week as he watched Ted play, in what has to be the giveaway comment from any Irish father of his generation. I have always adored my dad but as any Irish '80s child will tell you, the presence of an '80s dad could only be likened to the presence of God himself: you knew they existed, that they loved you unconditionally but seeing them daily was a certified miracle.

Now they get all the good bits without worrying about bottles, mortgage repayments, imminent Sellafield disasters, or the sheer, all-consuming relentlessness of parenthood. It is a beautiful thing to see them enjoy Ted for just being Ted, and, though hilarious at times, their indulgence of their first grandchild makes my heart burst.

Ted draws on a wall and I go to clean it off but as I do, my mother shoos me away: "That will be worth money one day," she says. Grapes for Ted are carefully quartered like Guy Fawkes, hot water bottles make his bed unseasonably cosy. Nappy changing is when Nana comes alive: Ted is treated to leg massages, luxurious bum drying with fresh-smelling towels, a choice of books to read and on occasion a cartoon, an 'uimhir a dó' eliciting a litany of praise akin only to a child reaching a Junior Masterchef final.  

My father, hitherto to be known as Gon Gon, doesn’t walk much, but luckily the party comes to him in the form of building blocks and an American-style toy farmhouse. Gon Gon, ever the man with the finger on the hard facts, talks him through the politics of agriculture and the importance of paying farm workers a decent wage. Ted nods along enthusiastically, occasionally mooing in agreement.

We don’t need to know grandparents for long to feel their presence and warmth and carry them with us. I was lucky enough to have my granda until I was ten, and he was a consummate feminist before Spicegirl Geri Halliwell had ever coined the term. A fisherman by trade, he was absurdly handsome and grew up in a house full of boys in a Dingle trawlermen’s enclave, which is still known as ‘The Colony’ (I feel a Brian Friel play coming on). 

Perhaps because of this very fact, he revelled in his daughters and granddaughters and had little time for my mischievous brother who once killed my pet starfish (I had wanted a Dalmatian but given that we already had a cat and a dog, a pet starfish seemed like a much more financially savvy option).

My granda believed in women to such an extent that even his contempt for Thatcher was minimal. He painted his house pink and listened intently to the debate surrounding the X Case on early '90s radio. ‘Why don’t they just let the little girl go to England?’ I remember him saying at the time. So much did I love my granda that I named my son after him - an easy thing to do when somebody’s name is Edward, had my beloved grandad been called Aloysius, it could have been a whole different story.

Recently my dad commented - within the context of our family’s history with childhood illness - how lucky we are to have a child who is healthy and who isn’t in and out of Crumlin all the time (the hospital, not the shopping centre). It struck me then how much this really is an opportunity for a second chance at things. And here is Ted - a second chance not just for my parents to be grandparents but also a second chance for me to be their daughter.

This morning is cloudy, and Nana asks if we should put a rain jacket on Ted. I am about to say ‘let’s ask his mammy’ when I realise I AM his mammy. The thought shakes me, and as I am about to undertake this gargantuan decision, I spot Ted in the garden chewing the brow-beaten football with his Rob Beckett gnashers.

"That child has such a talent, and I should know, I taught PE for over 40 years", my retired primary school mother announces, in all her ‘I AM Jose Mourinho glory’.

I don’t correct her because who better to tell you you can do something than when your mammy-granny is your biggest cheerleader and you are a little boy whose only job is to chew footballs and dream big?