So. The Franchise is walking now. Running sometimes. Maybe I should just say ‘walking…with authority!”¹ He and I were playing soccer last night, using this fabric ball with a bell inside that someone gave us. I say soccer² even though about 95% of the time he just grabs the ball with his hands. Still. He loves it. He even kicks it once in a while.

These days, having my dad live with us feels like a duty. It feels like the right thing to do, which is good. It feels like a good thing for him, especially when he needs us and we’re just upstairs instead of six hours away, or when he wants to see his grandson and The Franchise is just upstairs too, ready to laugh at him or growl or get Dad to shake his head at him, or all three at once.

But my relationship with Dad is odd, to me. I interpret the world for him. I help him figure out where to go, tell him what is recycling and what is compost and what is garbage, and reassure him that the guy the FBI caught in Washington DC was not wearing an actual bomb but that it was a sting.

It’s hard to remember when my dad was the kind of guy who would (or could, really) play with me. But he was. And when I was playing soccer with Wy last night I had this moment of déja vu, remembering when my dad used to play couch hockey with me. My mom would make balls out of old socks, and we would use my grandmother’s cane (she had passed away by this time), which was an old-school, thick curved piece of wood.³ We had a long living room, maybe 20 feet by 12 feet or so, and we had this ratty old yellow couch at one end.⁴ The goalie would defend the couch, equipped with a yardstick. The shooter would stick-handle (cane-handle?) as best he could and finally shoot. The goalie could attempt a glove save, which usually sent the ball up and over the couch into the sunburst-style wall-mounted clock, which would fall behind the couch. Or the goalie could execute a kick save, which if done with the left foot would shoot the ball up toward the top of the china hutch in the dining room, where it would take out one of my mom’s collection of kerosene lamps. My poor mom. She was pretty philosophical about most of the lamps, but I do remember her losing it at least once, which was perfectly justified.

I remember my tenth birthday party. We had a bunch of my fourth-grade classmates over for a scavenger hunt and cake, but what everybody wanted to do was to play living room hockey with my dad. He would have been 56 by this time.

He was a good dad to ten-year-old me in so many ways. I think I’m only starting to realize some of those ways now that I’m trying to be a good dad to my own little dude. And I’m starting to realize that I’ve forgotten a lot of the ways in which he was a good dad in the 30+ years since I was ten.