Seán Moncrieff: A time will come when my daughter won’t hold my hand in public, and that’s okay

This was the end of term for Daughter Number Four: straight from school to her friend’s house for a play date/water fight which turned into an impromptu sleepover. The following day the two of them came back to ours for a bit of light house-trashing, followed by a trip to their afterschool place where they had a PJs-and-film party. Then back to our house again for a nourishing evening meal (McDonald’s) and another sleepover.

The following morning they joined some other kids from their class to go to the Minions movie, and then Herself and Daughter Number Four went to a baby shower. Daughter Number Four spent most of that upstairs playing with another girl, while Herself was downstairs belting out the hits on a karaoke machine. The mother-to-be wore the kind of pained smile exclusively reserved for the only sober person in the room.

After all that, we resolved to spend Sunday doing as little as humanly possible; which we did, until Daughter Number Four got a little antsy and asked to go for a bike ride. Some years back, when her sisters were little older than she is now, it was proposed that we go for a hike up a hill. To them, this was a baffling idea. “Why?” one asked. “Is there a shop up there?” Daughter Number Four deploys a similar logic when she asks to ride her bike. It’s pointless to go anywhere unless there is a destination: in this case, what she refers to as the Treat Shop.

She likes to take her time getting there. She favours a bit of cycling, then a break to ask a question or make a declaration. By the halfway point we’d discussed what treats we like or don’t like. She can’t decide if she likes salt and vinegar crisps more than cheese and onion, but she doesn’t like Doritos. She explained that having a superpower isn’t always a good thing. For instance, if you have super-speed and run too fast, you could catch fire. For reasons she wouldn’t explain, she wanted to know if I own a glue gun. (I do.)

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Her school is only a few minutes from our house, so we diverted in there so she could ride around the playground. She explained the rules of the various games painted on the ground. She showed me where her class will line up in September. She’s going into first class. It will be her first experience of school with a new teacher.

Daughter Number Four was quite matter-of-fact doing all this, yet I found the closed school slightly sad, even a little eerie. Like all schools, it’s normally a noisy, frenetic place. For it to be suddenly plunged into silence felt unnatural; reducing the thousands of stories that have played out there into a collection of empty buildings.

We eventually made our cycle-chatting way to the treat shop, where she was fastidious in her selection process, making sure to pick up and examine every candidate. She chose something small but with radioactive levels of sugar.

On the way home we passed the school again, and I wondered how many times she has entered and left that building, and how many more times she’ll do it over the next six years. There may be times when she’ll dread it or love it. There may be times when she’ll walk home in tears or brimming with happiness. She’ll learn every crack in the pavement, every front door.

She, of course, is unaware of this. Children her age have the great gift of being able to effortlessly exist in the present. Even the stretch of summer is an unimaginably long time. Eventually, she’ll be able to go to the treat shop on her own, or with her friends; and by then will probably feel awkward about holding her daddy’s hand in public. And that’s how it should be.