No hugs, but Skype will have to do.

Face time and Skype means that I no longer just chat to my daughter who lives in Berlin.

Our conversations cost nothing. We talk on board a train or in the car. We sometimes shop, we sometimes show each other things and ask for help and our opinion.

The world has opened up a bit since the day of sending morse code messages and telegrams.

And while I applaud this development which enables you remarkably to see and hear across the world, I remain selfishly wanting to fulfill all of those senses. Sometimes there is nothing like a hug between a mother and her daughter.

I have felt the lack of this since my daughter moved to live in Berlin almost three years ago. But happily, my whirlwind youngest child recently returned to pack as much into two weeks as only she can and in so doing, offered me a sensory overload.

I devoted the two weeks that she was here to my daughter, a daughter who talks to me almost daily but who I haven't been able to hug for more than a year. I hugged her every day, just because I could.

I've tried to open my arms to the computer screen.  But we all know Skype hugging is like hugging a hard little square device that you hold in your hand because we are actually hugging said device.

But in the past few weeks, I have had the real thing. I have hugged her squishy bits and felt the whoosh of her hair. I have heard the edge of tiredness in her voice. We have shopped without the help of face time. We have seen a movie. We have walked on the beach. We have sat opposite each other at the table and shared some food.

We have laughed and I could touch the laughter tears if I wanted to.

I like having her here. I like her friends who orbit about when the star returns to its Australian galaxy. The world feels right again.

But then I saw her off to the airport again. We smiled through the tears. She walked away to a happy life with her husband in Germany. I walked to the car and resumed my own. The stock of hugs gained in a fortnight were there to sustain us again. Such are our lives.