If there’s one thing I am so grateful to have learned from going to an all-girls school that’s more useful to me now than solving the distances of a car accelerating at a uniform rate, it would be sewing.

So when my daughter presented me with a screenshot of her Roblox avatar’s hat that she wanted me to make for her school’s Halloween Disco, I was up for the challenge.

Sort of.

I mean, the weekend before is enough of a warning, yeah?

One day to watch DIY Youtube videos on how to make felt pumpkin decors and rack my brain on how to make it work given that I have to convert it into a hat; the next day to get overwhelmed at Spotlight to buy the materials needed; and later, an afternoon cutting the orange felt into a circle using a bronze Mayan calendar because it’s the biggest circular pattern I could find.

“I’ll do my best, okay, baby?” I said as a disclaimer as soon as I realised that the work-in-progress wasn’t exactly bright nor breezy. “If it’s not the best, at least we tried.”

“The important thing is that Mama made it,” she said, moving her head close to give me a kiss. The kind of gesture that makes any mother try even harder simply to make it all worthwhile.

And it was. Talk about mother-daughter bonding. I did the main bits and she hot glued the finishing touches to make it her own.

Messy, but totally worth it.

*Raven at 8 years old