Outlander: Best moments with Grandparents ! Jamie and Claire.

Jamie and Claire are our favorite grandparents – and that’s why we’re giving you some excerpts from the Outlander books to celebrate them on this special day!

Today in Italy we celebrate Grandparents’ Day. In Outlander Season 5, we got to see the protagonists Jamie and Claire embracing this unexpected and new role. And that’s why we at Survived The Shows decided to celebrate them by sharing with you some of the best moments from Diana Gabldon’s books along with some pictures from the TV series portraying Jamie and Claire as grandparents on Outlander!

SPOILER ALERT!!! Some of the excerpts featuring Jamie and Claire as grandparents have not yet been featured in the Outlander TV series so far.

Jamie and Claire takes care of little Jemmy on Brianna and Roger’s wedding day

“You were in Hillsborough in September, aye? Here, Sassenach, take this wee squirrel away.” Jamie interrupted himself to hand me Jemmy, who had decided to take a more active interest in the proceedings and was attempting to climb his grandfather’s torso, digging in his toes and making loud grunting noises. The sudden activity, however, was not
Jamie’s chief motive for relieving himself of the burden, as I discovered when I accepted Jemmy.
“Thanks a lot,” I said, wrinkling my nose. Jamie grinned at me, and turned Duncan up the path, resuming
their conversation.

“Hmm,” I said, sniffing cautiously. “Finished, are you? No, I thought not.” Jemmy closed his eyes, went bright red, and emitted a popping noise like muffled machine-gun fire. I undid his wrappings sufficiently to peek down his back.
“Whoops,” I said, and hastily unwound the blanket, just in time. “What has your mother been feeding you?”
Thrilled to have escaped his swaddling bands, Jemmy churned his legs like a windmill, causing a noxious yellowish substance to ooze from the baggy legs of his diaper.

“Pew,” I said succinctly, and holding him at arm’s length, headed off the path toward one of the tiny rivulets that meandered down the mountainside, thinking that while I could perhaps do without such amenities as indoor plumbing and motorcars, there were times when I sincerely missed things like rubber pants with elasticated legs. To say nothing of toilet rolls.

I found a good spot on the edge of the little stream, with a thick coating of dead leaves. I knelt, laid out a fold of my cloak, and parked Jemmy on it on his hands and knees, pulling the soggy clout off without bothering to unpin it.
“Weee!” he said, sounding surprised as the cold air struck him. He clenched his fat little buttocks and
hunched like a small pink toad.

“Ha,” I told him. “If you think a cold wind up the bum is bad, just wait.” I scooped up a handful of damp yellow-brown leaves, and cleaned him off briskly. A fairly stoic child, he wiggled and squirmed, but didn’t screech, instead making high-pitched “Eeeeee” noises as I excavated his crevices.
I flipped him over, and with a hand held prophylactically over the danger zone, administered a similar treatment to his private parts, this eliciting a wide, gummy grin.

“Oh, you are a Hieland man, aren’t you?” I said, smiling back.
“And just what d’ye mean by that remark, Sassenach?” I looked up to find Jamie leaning against a tree on the other side of the streamlet. The bold colors of his dress tartan and white linen sark stood out bright against the faded autumn foliage; face and hair, though, made him look like some denizen of the wood, all bronze and auburn, with the wind stirring his hair so the free ends danced like the scarlet maple leaves above.

“Well, he’s apparently impervious to cold and damp,” I said, concluding my labors and discarding the final handful of soiled leaves. “Beyond that . . . well, I’ve not had much to do with male infants before, but isn’t this rather precocious?”
One corner of Jamie’s mouth curled up, as he peered at the prospect revealed under my hand. The tiny appendage stood up stiff as my thumb, and roughly the same size.

“Ah, no,” he said. “I’ve seen a many wee lads in the raw. They all do that now and again.” He shrugged, and the smile grew wider. “Now, whether it’s only Scottish lads, I couldna be saying . . .”

The Fiery Cross, Chapter 1, Happy The Bride The Sun Shines On

Jamie teaches little Jemmy and Germain how to swim

“Look at you!” she said, dismay tempered by resignation. “How could you possibly get that filthy?”
“Oh, it’s easy, lass,” her father assured her, grinning as he rose to his feet.
“Easy cured, too, though.” He bent, and seizing Germain by the back of shirt and seat of breeks, heaved him neatly off the rock and into the pool below.

“Me, too, me, too! Me, too, Grandda!” Jemmy was dancing up and down in excitement, spattering clods of mud in all direction.
“Oh, aye. You, too.” Jamie bent and grabbed Jem round the waist, launching him high into the air in a flutter of shirt before Brianna could cry out.
“He can’t swim!”

This protest coincided with a huge splash, as Jem hit the water and promptly sank like a rock. She was striding toward the edge, prepared to dive in after him, when her father put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“Wait a bit,” he said. “How will ye ken whether he swims or not, if ye dinna let him try?”
Germain was already arrowing his way toward shore, his sleek blond head dark with water. Jemmy popped up behind him, though, splashing and spluttering, and Germain dived, turned like an otter, and came up alongside.
“Kick!” he called to Jemmy, churning up a huge spray in illustration. “Go on your back!”

Jemmy ceased flailing, went on his back, and kicked madly. His hair was plastered over his face and the spray of his efforts must have obscured any remnants of vision—but he went on valiantly kicking, to encouraging whoops
from Jamie and Germain.

The pool was no more than ten feet across, and he reached the shallows on the opposite bank within seconds, beaching among the rocks by virtue of crashing headfirst into one. He stopped, thrashing feebly in the shallows, then
bounced to his feet, showering water, and shoved the wet hair out of his face.
He looked amazed.
“I can swim!” he shouted. “Mama, I can swim!”

“That’s wonderful!” she called, torn between sharing his ecstatic pride, the urge to rush home and tell Roger about it—and dire visions of Jemmy now leaping heedlessly into bottomless ponds and rock-jagged rapids, under the reckless delusion that he could indeed swim. But he’d gotten his feet wet, in no uncertain terms; there was no going back.

“Come here!” She bent toward him, clapping her hands. “Can you swim back to me? Come on, come here!”
He looked blankly at her for an instant, then around him at the rippling water of the pool. The blaze of excitement in his face died.

“I forget,” he said, and his mouth curled down, fat with sudden woe. “I forget how!”
“Fall down and kick!” Germain bellowed helpfully, from his perch on the rock. “You can do it, cousin!”
Jemmy took one or two blundering steps into the water, but stopped, lip trembling, terror and confusion starting to overwhelm him.

“Stay there, a chuisle! I’m coming!” Jamie called, and dove cleanly into the pool, a long pale streak beneath the water, bubbles streaming from hair and breeks. He popped up in front of Jemmy in an explosion of breath and shook his head, flinging strands of wet red hair out of his face.
“Come along then, man,” he said, scooting round on his knees in the shallows, so that his back was to Jemmy. He looked back, patting his own shoulder. “Take hold of me here, aye? We’ll swim back together.”

And they did, kicking and splashing in ungainly dog paddle, Jemmy’s shrieks of excitement echoed by Germain, who had leaped into the water to paddle alongside.
Hauled out onto the rock, the three of them lay puddled, gasping and laughing at her feet, water spreading in pools around them.
“Well, you are cleaner,” she said judiciously, moving her foot away from a spreading streamlet. “I’ll admit that much.”
“Of course we are.” Jamie sat up, wringing out the long tail of his hair.

A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Chapter 49, The Venom of North Wind

Little Jemmy sees the scars on Grandda Jamie’s back for the first time

“What’s that, Grandda?” Jemmy had got to his feet, wet hair standing up in red spikes, and was looking curiously at Jamie’s back. He put out a tentative finger and traced one of the long, curving scars.
“What? Oh … that.” Jamie’s face went quite blank for a moment. “It’s … ah …”
“Some bad people hurt Grandda once,” she interrupted firmly, bending down to pick Jemmy up. “But that was a long time ago. He’s all right now. You weigh a ton!”

“Papa says Grandpere is perhaps a silkie,” Germain remarked, viewing Jamie’s back with interest. “Like his papa before him. Did the bad people find you in your silkie skin, Grandpere, and try to cut it from you? He would then of course become a man again,” he explained matter-of-factly, looking up at Jemmy, “and could kill them with his sword.”
Jamie was staring at Germain. He blinked, and wiped his nose again.

“Oh,” he said. “Aye. Um. Aye, I expect that was the way of it. If your papa says so.”
“What’s a silkie?” asked Jemmy, bewildered but interested. He wiggled in Brianna’s arms, wanting to be put down, and she lowered him back to the rock.
“I don’t know,” Germain admitted. “But they have fur. What’s a silkie, Grandpere?”
Jamie closed his eyes against the sinking sun, and rubbed a hand over his face, shaking his head a little. Brianna thought he was smiling, but couldn’t tell for sure.

“Ah, well,” he said, sitting up straighter, opening his eyes, and throwing back his wet hair. “A silkie is a creature who is a man upon the land, but becomes a seal within the sea. And a seal,” he added, cutting off Jemmy, who had been opening his mouth to ask, “is a great sleek beastie that barks like a dog, is as big as an ox, and beautiful as the black of night. They live in the sea, but come out onto the rocks near the shore sometimes.”

“Have you seen them, Grandpere?” Germain asked, eager.
“Oh, many a time,” Jamie assured him. “There are a great many seals who live on the coasts of Scotland.”
“Scotland,” Jemmy echoed. His eyes were round.
“Ma mere says Scotland is a good place,” Germain remarked. “She cries sometimes, when she talks of it. I am not so sure I would like it, though.”

“Why not?” Brianna asked.
“It’s full of giants and water horses and … things,” Germain replied, frowning. “I don’t want to meet any of those. And parritch, Maman says, but we have parritch here.”
“So we have. And I expect it’s time we were going home to eat some.”
Jamie got to his feet and stretched, groaning in the pleasure of it. The lateafternoon sun washed rock and water with a golden light, gleaming on the boys’ cheeks and the bright hairs on her father’s arms.
Jemmy stretched and groaned, too, in worshipful imitation, and Jamie laughed.
“Come on, wee fishie. D’ye want a ride home?” He bent so that Jemmy could scramble onto his back, then straightened up, settling the little boy’s weight, and put out a hand to take Germain’s.

A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Chapter 49, The Venom of North Wind

Jamie says goodbye to little Jemmy

Jamie looked down at Jem, who was clinging to his hand, looking back and forth between father and grandfather, confusion, fright, and longing in his face.
“If one day, a bhailach,” Jamie said conversationally, “ye should meet a verra large mouse named Michael—ye’ll tell him your grandsire sends his regards.” He opened his hand, then, letting go, and nodded toward Roger.

A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Chapter 120 If For Myself

Claire visits Marsali, Fergus and their large family in Philadelphia to help them with Henri-Christian

These morbid thoughts were interrupted by Marsali’s return, Henri-Christian scampering beside her.
“Grandmère!” shouted, seeing me, and leapt into my arms, nearly knocking me over. He was a very solid little boy.

Hernri-Christian nuzzled me affectionately, and I felt a remarkable rush of warm joy at seeing
him. I kissed and hugged him fiercely, feeling the hole left in my heart by Mandy and Jem’s departure fill up a bit.

Isolated from Marsali’s family in Scotland, I had nearly forgotten that I still had four lovely grandchildren left and was grateful to be reminded of it.

“Want to see a trick, Grandmère?” Henri-Christian croaked eagerly. Marsali was right; he did sound like a constipated bullfrog. I nodded, though, and, hopping off my lap, he pulled three small leather bags stuffed with bran out of his pocket and began at once to juggle them with amazing dexterity.
“His da taught him,” Marsali said, with a certain amount of pride.
“When I’m big like Germain, Da will teach me to pick pockets, too!”
Marsali gasped and clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Henri-Christian, we dinna ever speak o’ that,” she said sternly. “Not to anybody. D’ye hear?”
He glanced at me, bewildered, but nodded obediently.
The chill I had felt earlier returned. Was Germain picking pockets professionally, so to speak? I looked at Marsali, but she shook her head slightly; we’d talk about it later.

An Echo in the Bone, Chapter 37, Severance and Reunion.

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Chiara

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