age is no barrier

Like a lot of gay people, I am "out". All my friends know and it is not an issue with them - friends are friends and are totally unconcerned who I sleep with. My colleagues at work also consider it irrelevant, as it is. It's rarely even a matter for discussion. It's only with older family members that the old barriers come out and things are not spoken about, hidden. I use all the old cliches others use to explain why I've never told them - they're too old, I'm too far away, why worry them, it would hurt them, they're from a different generation where such things were swept under the carpet, they're too old to change their ways, etc.

My siblings are of a different generation and have long since known - again, they're utterly unconcerned. It's now only my parents and my grandmother whom I have left clinging to the hope that one day I'll bring home a nice lass and eventually produce someone to carry on the family name. The idea that I prefer men would, I've always assumed, be incomprehensible to them - especially my grandparents, for whom I thought the word "gay" still meant happy or brightly coloured. I remember once watching wrestling on television with my maternal grandmother before she died. The two wrestlers we were watching were called "Gorgeous George" and "Magnificent Maurice". As they camped it up and fixed their hair after each neck lock, my grandmother turned to me and said "Dost know what? Those two blokes am a couple of lesbians!" This, I assumed, was indicative of my grandparents' understanding of homosexuality.

I went back to England this summer. I was met at the airport by my brother's partner. She has recently given birth to my beautiful niece, whom she and my brother had presented to my other grandmother, now ninety-six years old, a few weeks before. As we drove home, my sister-in-law told me about the conversation when they introduced Gran to the kid.

Gran looked at the baby, turned round and thanked them for giving her a great granddaughter at last. "Her's grand. A day think as ah'd ever av ne'er a great granddaughter (She's beautiful. I never thought I'd have a great granddaughter - Gran only speaks the local dialect and struggles to understand so-called standard English - I'll translate the rest). "Your sister was always too worried about keeping her slim figure and your brother sticks it in the wrong place." My brother and his girlfriend both spat out their tea on hearing this last comment but my grandmother continued unperturbed. She was watching "Will and Grace" at the time. She pointed at the screen and said, "Your brother's like them. He's like your Uncle John. Always preferred the boys. I don't mind though. I still love him."
Years of concealment, only to discover that someone born four years before the First World War not only knows, but is totally unconcerned. We often think that those born many years ago are naive, uninformed. Turns out they knew just what we now know. They just didn't necessarily know the "right" words to talk about it.
Kalhnychta se olous, nos da i chi gyd and good night, each.