I took my daughter on a holiday to Hong Kong to visit family. I didn’t realise how hard it would be to leave | Lucille Wong

I recognised the longing to be in two places at once. When you have two worlds, you always have to say goodbye to one

Last school holidays, I took my daughter to Hong Kong, my birthplace and home for the first eight years of my life.

I had taken her plenty of times before, but every visit had been fleeting. Accommodation is expensive, so we usually stay just enough to share a meal or two with close family.

The reason for an extended stay came when my grandfather died last year. My grandmother had just lost her husband of seven decades, and as she is in her 90s herself, there couldn’t be too many years left. I felt an urge to spend as much time as I could with her and an even greater urge for my nearly seven-year-old daughter to know her.

So I decided to take the school holidays off work and take my daughter to stay in in the spare bedroom of my grandmother’s small apartment. While I knew two weeks wasn’t that long, it was all we had. I started to plan playdates with my cousins’ children and activities for my daughter, such as Cantonese classes.