The children were with us for Christmas. Our son left, as planned, on Boxing Day. Our daughter, however, had an unexpected gap in her work schedule and was also a little unwell. We asked, tentatively, whether she had to go? She was very welcome to stay a little longer. This was a mantra we repeated each day and I felt, for just a short while, that I could mother my daughter again. We didn’t do much. It was that idle, post-Christmas time, when jigsaws are done, and television is watched, and it’s normal to have a tin of Quality Street open, and sofas are made for lying on, not sitting. She didn’t need much: I could fill her a hot water bottle at bedtime and offer her soup for lunch. She lives a busy life and, while I see her frequently and she is diligent at keeping in touch, it was unusual and precious to spend such an extended time with her. I found myself describing it, afterwards, as profoundly healing.

This is not, of course, a house they have ever lived in. When they visit, my children are not ‘coming home,’ although their itinerant childhood, with four different houses before either hit double figures, has perhaps made them adaptable. When my son was two, and his new sibling imminent, we bought a climbing frame and slide from the Early Learning Centre. I’m happy to see that something similar is still available and it made me smile to see that the new model has a two-year guarantee. Ours lasted about 19 years; dismantled and reassembled, it moved with us from garden to garden. Eventually we stopped moving, and still the children grew, until the slide was warped into a dangerous twist and we had to remove it, and the rusting bars started to bow under the weight of raucous adolescents. It became battered, unsightly, probably unsafe and certainly anomalous. It made absolutely no sense to keep it. Yet I miss it. For, to misquote Paul Young, wherever we laid our climbing frame, that was home. It was our continuity. Beyond all logic, part of me wishes it was, even now, filling the backyard. And yet, of course, at the same time, I don’t: it would render the space unusable – the space where, in the summer, I hang the hammock and lie, lazily, blissfully, with a book and a glass of Warner’s rhubarb gin. Similarly, while I loved being able to regress to caring for my daughter for a few days, it was regression. I would not want to be trapped in that past. I have a life now. As, of course, does she.

A few days after our daughter had left, I had a message from a friend. His son had returned to college and “I miss him already,” he said. We do, we parents. We miss our children. But we want them to leave. To fledge. We rejoice in their flight. It validates us.

We are now graced with semi-regular visits from a little girl who is some 21 months old. With every meeting, I see changes. Childhood is constant change, incessant learning and continuous development. And it is, it seems to me, the adult’s role to provide constancy. Even for our young visitor, who has now visited us enough times for the house to be familiar: she looks for the toys she knows we have; she asks to play at the sink again; she navigates the steep steps down to the kitchen with increased confidence. Finding the same things here creates a sense of safety and security for her.

Like the climbing frame in the garden. Whichever garden.

For so much of childhood, the anxious parent – and where is the parent who is not anxious? Not to be so feels akin to being neglectful – the anxious parent, therefore, is looking ahead to the next milestone and the next target. What is the age recommendation on this toy? When will she start walking? Talking? If she’s talking in words, when will she start talking in sentences? When will she come out of nappies? If she is dry during the day when will she be dry at night? The older generation sagely advise “enjoy it while you can” but really we are just as caught up in this development race. There is, I remember, a brief, blessed – yet also disorientating – time just after the birth when, if measured at all, time is accounted for in hours and days of this new life and everything is elastic. Then, so swiftly, it hardens into routines and expectations. It needs to, for sanity’s sake. We push on, and count the birthdays, and start to talk about progress in terms, and key stages, academic years and, suddenly, degree courses and jobs. Childhood is over.

But sometimes, such as in those uncountable days betwixt Christmas and New Year, we can find something of it again. Freed temporarily from the incessant urging forward, we can recreate the moments. The just being there, and being around, and being together. Just being a mother and a daughter. Precious beyond measure.