We were in Tbilisi over Easter, the main festival in Georgia. Like Christmas at home, it's a time for visiting, feasting, opening the home to friends and relatives. It struck me that in every home we visited, there was an elderly mother, living with her children and grandchildren. Sometimes she was helping, bringing dishes and glasses to the table, sometimes she was barely seen, slipping from bedroom to kitchen or bathroom, then disappearing like a shadow back into her own room.
We heard many conflicting stories about this living arrangement. Sometimes the mother, or more commonly the mother-in-law, was a nuisance, vetoing home improvements or complaining about the absence abroad of a son or daughter. Usually she was a much-loved and natural baby-sitting, looking after her grandchildren so that daughters and daughter-in-laws could work. When people talked about these women, there was a mix of love and exasperation but never a question of changing the status quo.
When I came home, I read, after hearing some of it on R4's Book of the Week, Marie de Hennezel's The Warmth of the Heart Stops the Body from Rusting - a polemic about aging and how it is dreaded in our culture. Without wanting to romanticise the Georgian approach, it seems to me that living with the extended family, joining in the singing at an Easter feast, then slipping away into one's own room when one wants, wouldn't be an unpleasant way of getting old.
