One of the most interesting things about being human is that we pass on more than genetics to our descendants. Language, the neocortex, agriculture, and all the many other things that contribute to what make humans human are handed down, consciously or unconsciously, by our grandparents. We are the privileged receivers of the fruit of experience.

This might sound less marvellous today, in the immense shadow of the internet and in an age where incalculable amounts of information are at our fingertips. However, there are qualities to the things we learn from grandparents that cannot be found in any way virtually. Learning something from a grandparent is to live it. You can gleam a close, tactile tangibility through a grandparent’s words that you will never be able to through a Wikipedia article. That is, if you’re listening.

I’m tasked with two interviews. The first is between a grandmother and her granddaughter, the second between a grandfather and his grandson. We’ll start with the first. It takes place at Hanny Deep, Edith Boutique in Żabbar Road, Paola, where I find Bettina Aquilina and her grandmother Judith Mercieca. After some awkward fiddling with a recorder on my part, they are happy to divulge their story.

The boutique was opened by Judith and her mother, Bettina’s great-grandmother. Growing up, Bettina was practically a fixture in the shop, helping customers while being cared for by her grandmother. She even has her own room.

“It’s as if she is my own daughter,” Judith says.

I point out that they seem to have colour-coded their outfits and I ask whether or not it was planned. Itwasn’t. It’s plain to see that if Bettina had picked up anything, it was a sense of style, one that she used over the years to help choose selections of clothes to sell at the Edith Boutique.

Apart from clothes, memories are also frequently shared through food. A tradition which Judith and Bettina shared is that nearly every Saturday, when they closed shop, they would go buy pastizzi. Then Bettina would enjoy a sleepover at her grandmother’s, and wake up to an all-out breakfast: cheeses, eggs and ham. Then after mass, Bettina’s mother would pick them up to go for lunch.

“I still go over sometimes,” Bettina says. “And they still spoil me like a little kid.”

One thing which Bettina has learnt from her grandmother is her dedication to the shop, to her family, to her work; to wake up every day and head to the grindstone and be constantly pushing, a never-say-never attitude and an animosity towards doing nothing. I’ve only shared a few words with Judith, but I could already see what Bettina is talking about.

But times change a little, whether we like it or not. Judith says that as her grandchildren got older she got to see them less, a truth of the nature of grandparenthood and of growing up.

Photos: Jamie Iain Genovese

This is something I understand. For the grandfather-grandson interview I interview my own grandfather, Laurence Mizzi, round the corner from the first interview. Visiting my grandparents for a couple of days, reminiscing with them about stories we told or things we did, makes me realise that over the years I have been spending less time with them.

There is a quality of richness, a sort of peace, in spending time with your parents’ parents. Amid the cups of tea and plates of biscuits I feel a deep sense of gratitude and tenderness in my heart that make me feel like a child again – and yet, I’m aware of how many years have passed since I would go to the Fgura playground with my grandfather.

You can gleam a close, tactile tangibility through a grandparent’s words that you will never be able to through a Wikipedia article

Gratitude is something I probably learned from him, after all the wartime stories I would hear. It’s hard not to appreciate paper when your grandfather once had to write on bits of orange peel in school. It’s hard not to appreciate food when the grey-haired man in front of you as a boy had once convinced a smaller child to sneak into a Victory Kitchen to smuggle out dried fruit to eat and share with others (to the dismay of an officer of the law).

Storytelling was central to the childhood days I spent with my grandfather after school, much like for any grandson. But I do feel that the hours I spent toying with the typewriter in his study and hearing stories that daily fed my voracious imagination sowed a seed in my heart that would grow into a great love of language, literature and their synthesis. I loved going up into his study, playing with the three wooden animal figurines and eyeing shelves upon shelves of books, some were his, most weren’t. Nonetheless, it was all fantastic, perfect in every way.

I wonder what it was like, having kids around the house again, how I compared to my mother or my uncle. I was an easy child, he tells me. Having me, and then later my sister, around was tiring, but also vitalising. He tells me how both he and my grandmother would worry over me, hoping I wouldn’t fall, zipping up my jacket so I wouldn’t catch a cold, how stressful it is to be responsible for your child’s child.

But then he also tells me how much life it gave them, how it made them feel younger, and how good it was to spend time with us, to know us. Somewhere in the reminiscing I feel a warm mist in my eyes, and while I’m writing this I wonder if they noticed.

I could write more on events from my childhood centred around my grand-father, a memoir’s worth perhaps. But this vignette’s vignette will have to do. It’s beyond my ability to even begin to imagine just how much more could have been said of Bettina’s relationship with her grandmother, Judith, had we the time to listen and the inches to write.

Our relationships with our grandparents could be our greatest personal treasure, if we’re not too busy to notice.