Recently I read this “Twenty years in the blink of an eye and every afternoon eternal” and it resonated. It seems that our daughters have gone from being these children playing on the beach to the women they are now, aged 35 and 33, in the blink of an eye. I well remember the eternal afternoons, and mornings, when looking after two young children was at once exhausting and interminable, filled with the mundanities of feeding, changing soiled clothing, playing and intervening in squabbles. Older people, including my mother and mother-in-law, would advise me to enjoy this time because they grow up so quickly. And I thought, quickly! you must be joking! Now that I am older, I know what they meant – their childhood now seems like a remote dream and I can only vividly remember isolated incidents.

Incidents like the afternoon when the five-month-old lying on the sofa beside me found her feet, which kept her (and me) entertained for most the next hour as she tried to catch them and when she did, putting her toes into her mouth. Like taking them to the library, where they were able to choose five books a week. Then getting home and having to read all ten books immediately, the girls sitting on the sofa beside me, their little legs sticking straight out. Like sitting at the table in the kitchen having dinner, which Dad had cooked and which I was lavishly complimenting and to which our younger daughter responded “Daddy’s a clever girl!” Like the girls being small enough to lean against my legs while I put on their socks and shoes, their sweet-smelling heads below me. Like Saturday nights, when Dad bathed them and washed their hair, sending them through to me to dry and dress in their pyjamas and bright red dressing gowns, while he made them ‘face’ pizza for dinner and we all watched Country Calendar.

Those older women were quite right when they told me how quickly the time would go. One daughter left home for university at 17 and the other at 18 and they’ve never been back to live with us, apart from short study breaks and university vacations, and now only visit for even shorter periods once or twice a year. From the vantage point of our seventh decade, the last 20 years have gone in the blink of an eye.