My wife and I bridged the generation gap for a daughter who was eligible to drink her first drop of liquor in a licensed property.
She sipped the Marlborough riesling - they didn't have any Hawke's Bay ones - but her palate protested.
We made small talk about her impending new chapter of life in "Scarfie-dom", as we had done eight years before with her elder sister, but she seemed aloof, massaging the keys of her cellphone.
I gave her that parent-patented glare I had mastered in 26 years of fatherhood. It worked like the Hurricanes' rugby season to date.
I looked at my mother, her eyes smiling, only to realise she would have been through that spin-dry cycle with my late father when I had left my country of birth for New Zealand more than two decades ago.
Unwittingly we were embarrassing our last child. She was grateful we had carted her down to varsity but she didn't want us to overstay our welcome the next day, as her mum insisted on making her bed and hanging her clothes in the time-worn wardrobe.
My dadly duties were done and dusted - cricket bag thoroughly checked and conveniently tucked under the study table. She had flatly turned down suggestions of chucking in her soccer boots and shins pads for winter before we left home.
I realised she wasn't unappreciative - a typical teenage trait - but simply drawing the lines of engagement into adulthood.
The next day the Weir House halls of residence were beginning to feel like the parental halls of shame for me.
I wanted to respect her privacy although I felt obliged to lug suitcases and boxes for her and her fellow Bay roommate as the only bloke among females.
Another father, wearing a Magpies supporters' jersey, arrived later but admirably kept his distance as his daughter took charge.
About then it dawned on me that the daughters who had crawled on to our laps, content to watch rugby, soccer or cricket matches on TV were now well and truly players in their own right on the biggest and most neglected stage in the world - the game of life.
It only seemed like yesterday the girls had lost a tooth or grazed a knee, falling off their bikes not long after taking off the trainer wheels in a bid to join other uncool schoolmates wearing nerdy-looking helmets.
Where did those years go?
The third and final leg of education is the thrust for the orientation week mob for the next three years or so but, I hasten to add, sport will play a vital role in their lives.
Like a pinch of salt and pepper, sport will add spice not only to their academic journey but also well into their working lives.
It won't be like Super Rugby and IPL cricket because there's no fiscal future for women in the relatively tight window of sport.
For that matter, even the boys who don't have professional pedigree will find traction with sport.
The astute will slip on their boots when the mental marathons of lectures and tutorials will become overbearing.
Sport will become a timely distraction well after the opposite sex cease to be a novelty to the eye.
School principals and teachers, who have not always been quick on the uptake of the relevance of sport in children's lives, will attest to how effective it can be as a stabiliser, if not a career option.
In the formative years, my daughter not only honed her sporting skills but, I'd like to think, more importantly, acquired attributes such as making informed decisions under duress, communicating, judging character, differentiating sound advice from pomposity, travelling, budgeting and living away from home and all those things that make people productive specimen.
Her auspicious start at the Johnsonville Cricket Club and her recent request for her soccer gear to make the university team trials are encouraging signs before the academic demands kick in.
Whether she wilts or prevails under peak pressure later in the year only time will tell but there's no danger of all work and no play making her a dull girl.
For those parents who have made a conscious effort to give their children balance, take a bow.
Zipping children from choir practice to the hockey turf or netball courts may at times seem stressful now but enjoy it because it'll dissipate quicker than you probably ever imagined.
I'm not hankering to be forever stuck in the doldrums of "daddy's little girl" but simply saying it would be nice if that time went by a shade slower.
Those parents, coaches, managers and adult players who transported other people's children also are godsend.
Without them many youngsters would be poorer for it.
My wife and I have had a taste of the empty-nest syndrome not long after she bid our younger daughter farewell with her ritualistic advice of: "Don't forget to go to toilet before you go anywhere. This is Wellington, not Hawke's Bay."
I'm coping but, fortunately for her, our elder daughter, who we shoved off the nest eight years ago, has returned from the South Korean winter to roost, albeit fleetingly. The 26-year-old graduate has expressed interest in playing soccer before she migrates to who knows where.
