Stella and Toby’s grandmother–grandson relationship

Stella and Toby’s grandmother–grandson relationship is loving but shaped by separation: Toby grows up in Canada, while Stella and Gerry live far away in Glasgow. Stella has seen him, including when he was a year old, yet the visits cannot give her the day-to-day presence she longs for. Her sense of what she has missed turns the relationship into more than a family connection at a distance: it becomes a measure of the ordinary acts of care and shared time from which she is absent.

Family and Distance

Stella identifies Toby as her grandson when discussing her family with a woman at the Begijnhof. Her son, Michael, is now a man, and he and his family live in Canada. Stella and Gerry have travelled to see Toby; she recalls one visit when he was a year old, and the prospect of that meeting draws an immediate response of warmth from her. The exchange establishes that the relationship is real and cherished, but also that its opportunities for closeness depend on visits across a great distance.

The family’s departure from Glasgow gives that distance an emotional weight beyond miles. Stella remembers the first summer when the Canadians visited: the weather was unusually warm, and she pictures Gerry pushing the baby in a stroller through the Botanic Gardens, walking back and forth until Toby fell asleep and the grass was marked with tyre tracks. This intimate image of looking after him contrasts with the farewells at the airport, when Stella feared that an accident or some unforeseen tragedy might mean she would never see the family again. Knowing they could keep in touch by phone did not ease the parting.

The Grandmothering Stella Misses

What Stella most regrets is not simply the separation from Toby, but her absence from the repeated rituals through which a close family life is made. She longs for the rearing itself: babysitting, bathing, reading books, holding him cheek to cheek, witnessing his first words and first steps, and being needed and spoken of as his grandmother. These specific acts give her role a bodily, everyday meaning. A visit can bring affection and reunion, but it cannot supply the continuity of care she associates with being present as Toby grows up.

Stella’s memory of Gerry pushing the stroller offers a glimpse of that desired closeness in action. The image is affectionate and concrete, yet it is also bounded by a particular visit; the stroller’s repeated tracks across the garden do not become a daily family routine. Her account therefore holds pleasure and loss together: she remembers a tender scene with the baby while measuring it against all the ordinary experiences she did not share.

Visits, Farewells, and Longing

Stella and Gerry do go to Canada between the family’s visits to Glasgow, but she finds that these occasions are not equivalent to living nearby. Politeness shapes the visits, and Stella feels that she must respect Danielle and keep her own words in check. The constraint adds another limit to travel as a substitute for everyday intimacy: even when the family is physically together, the visit is not the same as being part of the household’s recurring life.

At the airport, Stella connects the family’s departure with the older history of emigration. She recalls the Cliffs of Moher, where families during the famine years watched loved ones sail away toward a better life elsewhere. Michael’s family is travelling by plane, and phone calls are no longer prohibitively expensive, but neither change removes the pain of farewell. Stella’s comparison places her personal separation within a familiar history of families divided by departure, while keeping the focus on what she herself misses: the daily, physical exchanges of love.

Significance in Stella’s Life

The relationship with Toby clarifies what Stella means by a life shared through care. Elsewhere, she describes domestic work as recurring, often unnoticed labour—the cooking, washing-up, laundry, and bills that have to be done again. Her longing to participate in Toby’s childhood similarly centres on repeated acts rather than exceptional occasions. Grandmotherhood, as she imagines it, is a continuing practice of attention and presence, not a title secured by occasional visits.

That longing sits within Stella’s wider concern about time, age, and the shape of the years ahead. As she worries about memory and recalls her own family’s old age, the thought of Toby brings childhood and the passage of generations close together. Her affection does not resolve the distance or restore the missed routines; instead, it makes their value unmistakable. Toby’s place in Stella’s life is thus defined both by the visits they share and by the everyday closeness she wishes those visits could become.