Earlier this week, on Tuesday morning, I told my two-year-old Polish grandpeep that I was going back to England that afternoon and asked if it was ok to go with her daddee, (my son) to drop her off at nursery (which I’ve done many times before). She loves nursery and dropping her off is usually a fun, happy moment to say our goodbyes and till-next-times. Leyla grinned and said yey-yey-yey, then pointed at my coat, handed me her nursery bag, took my hand and her daddee’s, and off we went, on the short five minute walk round the corner to nursery. Once there, as the assistant came out to collect Leyla and I waved goodbye, Leyla suddenly burst into floods of tears reaching out her arms, crying nie nie nie. As my heart cracked right down the middle, it became apparent that the poor nursery lady would have to wrestle Leyla inside, which she did.

Walking home in stunned silence, I felt an entirely new emotion – weird, bittersweet, entirely new. And not entirely satisfactory. It was a mixture of being properly distressed that my beloved grandpeep was so upset mixed with a dash of something like…dare I say it out loud… gratification – that she really, really didn’t want me to go. And then just slightly after the gratification kicked in, an after-hit of serious guilt – for being such a monster as to feel the gratification in the first place. Back at my son’s home, I tried to analyse the strange emotional cocktail.

Later at the airport, trying to ignore that also nameless emotion I’ve taken to calling airport desolation, I started Googling…and found nowt, not in English or any other language. I’ve been looking for days now – fallen reet down a rabbit hole looking. I’ve tried googling it as being a grandparent thing, I mean I certainly never felt anything like it as a parent – if my kids cried whilst being dropped off, I felt only distress; I’ve tried googling it as being a sort of schadenfreude and as a compound emotion, but nothing, then yesterday I had a terrible, terrible thought, that maybe it really is just monster-me and no-one else in the whole wide world has ever felt anything like it, ever. Which is why I’m writing this.

I often write to process emotion – usually in the form of flash fictions, sometimes in the form of creative non-fiction flashes, sometimes in the form of essays, never before in the from of a blog – but this time I really could do with a bit of help. So, if anyone out there knows a word for the feeling I described, in any language, please let me know. There’s a place for comments below this post, and I’d be so interested to find out. Also, if you’ve ever felt anything like it too, that would defo also be helpful.

Anyhoo,in other writing news, I won the South Worcestershire Literary Fest CNF prize this month, and will be reading my winning flash at the festival in September which I’m very excited about. I’m also looking forward to attending the National Flash Fiction Day event in Birmingham in June where I hope to meet some of the brilliant minds behind some of the winning micros in this year’s comp. It will be such a treat to hear those micros being read aloud by the folks who wrote them.

Reet, off to do some more googling about this wordless feeling thing. I’ve found loads of interesting words for emotions that English just doesn’t have. Here are a few that have really made me think:

Sukha (Sanskrit) – genuine lasting happiness independent of circumstances

Sehnsucht (German) – “life-longings”, an intense desire for alternative states and realisations of life, even if they are unattainable

Shemomedjamo – the feeling of continuing to eat way past fullness because the food is so delish (Georgian)

Natsukashii (Japanese) – a nostalgic longing for the past, with happiness for the fond memory, yet sadness that it is no longer there

There’s even a word in Indonesian for what it feels like when someone taps you from behind on your shoulder whilst standing on your other side – Mencolek – so somewhere, somehow there must be a word for a grandparent’s happy-sadness at leaving a child who’s distressed they’re leaving. Surely? Surely…