Francis Gay

MANDY’S favourite childhood memories involved sleep-overs with friends. Mum and dad pushed the furniture back, filled the living room floor with mattresses and left snacks around the edges. The gaggle of girls watched videos until late and chatted until they fell asleep.

Replicating that for her own daughter she realised it would have taken more than her own mattress and her sister’s to fill that floor. After dragging her big mattress downstairs she phoned her mum to apologise for making her spend the night on a bare divan bed-base.

“I don’t know how you slept like that,” Mandy said, “but I’m going to follow your example!”

“Oh, sweetheart,” her mum said with a chuckle. “We never slept a wink anyway – we were too busy listening out for you!”

Did Mandy follow their example? Judging by the yawns as she told me about it, I’d say so! NOW she’s a mother Dana understands that small hands don’t have room for big hands. So she puts her three fingers in her daughter’s hand and slips the pinkie around her wrist. That also gives her a better grip if the little one trips.

She remembers her dad doing the same to her when she was small. Actually, she only remembers being big enough to rebel against it, huffing against that little gesture and declaring that she wasn’t a baby any more.

Now she understands the love and care behind it.

Perhaps that’s why when, crossing a busy road together recently, 30 years after he gave up trying, dad absent-mindedly took her hand and curled his pinkie around her wrist. Dana never mentioned it, but she did give him a big hug on the other side. When he asked what that was for, she replied: “Oh, just the little things!”