I really love it. Thank you for drawing my attention to it! I love certain aspects like the gentle transition from the official-sounding "Grandmother" in the beginning to "her grandbub". It's tempting to pick nicknames for your characters and stick to them, so I'm glad you don't.
It's a bittersweet read. Grandparents not as disposable ancients (as our society so often dismisses them) but as adventurers.
How wild the world once felt. That was months before she fell pregnant with her first born, the one that would leave them because 'he was not ready yet to settle down'.
This is one of my favorite bits, although the second sentence confused me a bit. Does the baby leave them or the father?
How do you protect boys from absent fathers? How does one protect oneself from absence - of freedom, of youth, of loved ones disappeared and never coming back?
This, I just adore. I wonder it too. I don't think you can. Do you think otherwise?
As she drifted into a light sleep the soft rumbles and purrs of elephants filled the air, weaving through the branches of the eucalyptus trees. How odd, she thought, in a land of kangaroos.
Personally, I wound end it on this without the next sentence. But I am a bit abrupt, so maybe a difference of taste there. It's a beautiful arc that the story follows. Simple but very powerful. Elephants are everywhere. thank you for steering me towards this, my dear. And please write on.
<3
Grandparents as adventurers - yes. That's me. We have lives, dreams, desires.
The first born would grow up and leave - haha, not as a baby, but as a father. I could make it clearer I suppose.
You can't. It comes at us - we can't avoid it. It hurts.
Oooh yes I love that - that's a much better place to stop, I totally agree!!!! Thanks so much for coming at my behest, and if you are ever feeling unread, please ask me the same xxx
Oh... Perhaps just a switch of lines: