Column: We're always scared of losing connection with our kids as they grow up

She didn’t say anything, just answered all my questions with “fine”.

I tried to be cool about it, but I felt dismissed and discarded.

I made her a pot of tea and opened the biscuit jar. She slumped on the sofa and fell asleep.

Later, when I went to unpack her bag, I discovered she’d written to me every night in her diary.

What she’d eaten, what she wore, how she missed me.

She’d bought me a pen with the last of her pocket money. I will treasure that diary forever.

The fact she took the time to write it means so much to me.

She didn’t have to. She could have just chatted to her friends and eaten strawberry laces.

She thought of me. Of all the kindnesses I’ve known, the little ones always mean the most.

I tell my husband this when he buys me a birthday present, but never a card. He doesn’t get it.

He also doesn’t get why I don’t like being woken up at 2am by him cheering “defence” while watching NBA basketball on the TV in the bedroom.

I’ve started a writing course in London which I can’t find the way to.

The husband came with me for the first session to show me the way.

He walked at 100 miles an hour saying, “left here, right here, round here, up here, left, keep up, have you remembered all this?”

Obviously, I got lost on the way home and on the way there the next week.

I face-timed him to help me and he called me an idiot.

I hung up on him and then sat on the pavement (right next to where I was supposed to be but didn’t know it) and cried.

I’m rubbish with directions.

I can’t work out which way the blue dot on my phone is going when I use the map app. I end up off the page.

If the Chinese girl from my course, (who’s only been in England for two weeks, and has no problem navigating her way round High Holborn) hadn’t noticed me I wouldn’t have found it at all.

I would have hailed a taxi back to the station, given up and gone home.

Some role model, eh?

When you find something easy, it’s hard to understand why others struggle.

I find it easy to spot things that are right in front of me. The husband doesn’t.

He finds it easy to not notice the dishwasher needs loading and the dogs are barking for dinner. I don’t.

I find it easy to always put my keys and phone in the same place, so I can find them again. He doesn’t.

His dream came true this week when the eldest was chosen to play in the football tournament at school.

He went out and bought her all the gear, but like me with google maps she had no idea. We spent two hours on the side of the pitch shouting at her to “look up” and “stop twirling”.

When she did get hold of the ball she was awesome.

She did some excellent “long kicks” as I described them to the husband who begged me to go away.

Sadly, despite her efforts, the team came second to last, and the football boots have been slung in the back of the cupboard.

“What was the point?” she said, “we lost.”

I told her it’s the taking part that matters, but it’s a load of tripe.

She wanted her team to win. I wanted her team to win.

The husband was desperate for her team to win.

When I go to yoga and can’t even do the downward dog, I don’t feel pleased I took part. I feel embarrassed about my weak bladder and my lack of balance.

Losing is awful. Whether it’s a football match, or your way on a map, a person, your phone, your wallet, or your mind. It’s all awful.

How many of us have sweated like pigs as we’ve rifled through bags or drawers for that vital letter, or the passport we knew we’d put there? Losing makes us desperate.

As Elizabeth Bishop says so wonderfully ‘Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster.”

I’m trying to learn that being lost and losing, doesn’t have to be a catastrophic.

“I’m trying to teach my eldest the same thing.