While messages and memes ping daily between our phones, and calls and FaceTime happen as often as time differences and two small children allow, it has been four years since I last saw my daughter, Jill.

Since I waved her off at Cork Airport, the world seems to have shifted beneath our feet. Wars that once felt unimaginable have become part of the daily news cycle, a new king reigns in England, and artificial intelligence has not only become the news but has started to write it too.

The global population has passed eight billion, the race to return man to the moon has begun again for the first time since 1972, and Donald Trump is back in the White House.

Children born during the pandemic are now running into classrooms with oversized bags on their backs as their parents battle through cost-of-living and housing crises, while trying to make plans in a world where nothing feels certain.

Against all those world-shaping events, my own news, my own little sadness, feels very small. And yet, to me, it is huge.

In those same four years, I became a granny to three grandchildren: Senan, who lives on the other side of the county, and two small Australians – Luna and Ramses – who know me only through a screen.

I know they love Peppa Pig and penguins, that spaghetti bolognaise is their favourite dinner, and which child is more likely to kiss the screen enthusiastically before losing interest and wandering off.

I know the sound of their laughter, and I’ve watched tears track down small faces, but so far the only kisses I can give to ‘make it better’ have been virtual.

I’ve worn a path to the post office posting the daftest of things, yet my granddaughter gets it.

“Granny gets me everything I need,” she told her mum last week as she strutted around the sitting room wearing the plastic tiara and tutu that the postman had delivered.

But there are some things that neither the postal service nor technology can carry.

This is what love looks like now for so many families scattered across the globe, measured not in miles travelled, but in calls answered, parcels wrapped, bedtime stories read through screens, and the unwavering hope of homecomings still to come

I don’t know how heavy they feel when they fall asleep, nor the smell of their freshly washed hair after bath time. I haven’t felt their small sticky fingers clinging to mine or tucked them into bed after a long day at the beach.

There’s a quiet grief in loving children you haven’t held. It’s not dramatic enough to make headlines, and compared to the suffering unfolding across the world it, quite rightly, barely registers – but it’s there, arriving unexpectedly as I watch a grandmother scoop up small children at the school gate, or overhear someone complain about minding grandchildren for the afternoon.

At the same time, I know how fortunate we are in ways previous generations could never imagine. The fabric of our history is woven with emigration, Irish families have always stretched themselves across oceans and relied on letters that took weeks to arrive, if they arrived at all. Many never heard their loved one’s voice again after they boarded a ship.

Scattered across the globe

Now, with the touch of a button, I can chat with my daughter in her kitchen in Sydney as I stand in mine in this new world, which is both impossibly large and wonderfully small.

This is what love looks like now for so many families scattered across the globe, measured not in miles travelled, but in calls answered, parcels wrapped, bedtime stories read through screens, and the unwavering hope of homecomings still to come.

I often wonder what will feel strangest when we finally come together – how tall they are, the sound of their voices without the barrier of speakers, or the simple, wonderful joy of being able to reach out and hold the children I have already loved for years.

Until then, I’ll keep posting my love in padded envelopes, blowing kisses through screens, and counting down the days.

And if you’re ever in the airport and spot a small girl in a plastic tiara and tutu spinning in circles in arrivals, then you’ll know my family is finally home.