I awoke to a, quite frankly, feeble moon, full, or so she will be soon. She dithered behind the greyling clouds for a while. Come on, I said, and out loud, startling my sleeping orange tree and the damn geraniums, all ancient and why on earth do I keep them going? Duty, is all. They were my mother-in-law’s and all salmon pink and I am sick to my socks of salmon pink. It thinks me. I have annihilated quite a few growing things out there in the garden that is finally mine after a whole flipping lifetime of duty, but it always takes courage, or a glass of red, to spin me out there with my loppers. And that is how I see, or hope to see, my ten granddaughters, brave and confident and independent, freed from the constraints of an ancient hold on patriarchy. I also believe my grandsons won’t want it either, although those lads are heading into a world of strong decisive women and that brings its own consequences for them. Knowing their parents, they will be guided, but jeez the change will be tough, no known territory, no manual. I hope they learn on the hoof, by listening and observing, their learned ethics and principles supporting their journey into their own world.

Today one of my granddaughters played the pipes at a Highland games. I have two of these piper girls, beautiful young women, who know what they know, as I did not. They move like women and yet have no idea of the days into which they are moving. They have confidence, but so did I. They have answers, can parry, but so did I. In my day, men ruled and that was that. Now, it seems, women do and the outfall of that assumption of power is an obvious elevation above boys, men. Too much of a pendulum swing. But, who knows the learned behaviour of these boys, the influences to which they have been subjected? Did his/her mother teach of submission to the male, the husband, the doctor, the vicar, the policeman, the teacher, or just the husband of her next door? And did her/his father tell him to take the power, to dominate, to control, to make sure of the last word? So much has changed in so short a time, and it will confuse this new generation, until, eventually, the pendulum swings easy, tick, tock, tick tock. I am hopeful.

My role is to observe. I know that. I have 12 grandkids, 10 of them girls. The lads seem fine at family gatherings, lost in their constructions of whole worlds online, with AI working a treat, or reading, or discussing the dynamics of flight, whilst the girls flit like butterflies through every room, every conversation with wings and on brooms and sparkled with slap-on tattoos of unicorns, faeries and sparkles. All so lovely and all so transient. Does the hammer come down for them? Yes, it does, when trusted friendships sail away without them, when they meet the ‘old thinking’ inside a derisive comment, a judgement carelessly spilled from one who speaks out from learned behaviour, and it can turn an ok day into a catastrophe.

I’m glad I grew up in the arms of safety. I was definitely a child of my time when I met my match. Ten years his junior and absolutely discombobulated, well covered in the carapace of protection against my learned learning, that which made me wish I wanted be anywhere but where I was, so unfit was I for the obliging world of women back then. And he took the risk. He had also learned the old ways. And, as time went on, he brought them back. But, at first, I had met a man who didn’t treat me like the tea girl, the go-get-this girl, this don’t-interrupt-girl, the given cleaner, washergirl, the answer-the-phone-because-I’m-tired-girl. And the new of that captivated me.

I hope, for the next generation, that they can find their own way through the thixotrope of this changing world. I ache for the young men in the rise of strong women. I wonder how they will navigate. Yes, women have been suppressed and poorly informed, controlled and dominated for centuries, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need men. I suspect that it just takes good young dads to teach their sons a whole new learning, of the new female, feral, femaline.

I am always hopeful.