DaddyDay

DaddyDay (and it’s sister company MadreDia) is a public company that answers one very specific question: what if you could go back and play with your parents when they were children?

 

I look down at my hands, body, legs. I am a boy of five again, complete with red fire engine and denim overalls. I push the doorbell to number 42; it plays a steady rhythm.

 

My grandma opens the door. She looks so young and vital. For a second I forget myself.

“You must be Kevin’s friend,” she says, smiling in a matronly way. “He’s in the parlor.”

 

We haven’t called it that in years. I forget myself again, and pass through the ghost of my grandparents' house, when all that I know as old was new. The wallpaper un-yellows itself, and dents and chips in wood – some made by an infant-me – are gone.

 

Inside a fresh-smelling room, my father looks just like I did at that age. We could be twins. He already has the tablecloth half-off the table and a growing pile of cushions.

“Do you want to build a fort with me?” he says.

But it’s not a question. We both know I do.

 

I marvel at how his hands are so small and delicate. Hands that will one day pick me up, throw me on his shoulders and ascend mountains; hands that will dip me over the edge of the pedallo and into the sea as I scream in childish glee — in that comfortable terror that begs ‘Again! Do it again!’

 

We work for what seems like hours. The construction is carefully negotiated, built, tested, then argued over; his mother comes into the room with a silver-plated tray of cookies and cordial that she calls juice. It is enough for a truce as we sink into piles of cushions, not caring that our mouths are wet, our fingers sticky with sugar.

 

The day goes down outside the window, but we have built a fort against the night. We repel soldiers and aliens and indigenes, whatever our TV culture has taught us to fear. We fight together, one force against the world, then collapse into fits of giggles as one of us farts and names our collaboration Fort Fart!

 

My-father-the-man would tell me off, would teach me how to live in polite society; my-father-the-boy competes and we see who can gross the other out the most. It’s boy-humor; scatological. We flick boogers and spill juice and prank my grandmother (his mother) that someone has peed.

 

Night intrudes inevitably. All good things come to an end. The cookie crumbs are crushed into the carpet and cannot be separated out; our time together can never be undone.

 

But now it’s time for me to leave. My-father-the-boy waves at me.

“Will you play with me tomorrow?” he asks.

 

I remove the headset and I’m by my father’s bed. The beeping of a heart monitor keeps a steady rhythm. The old man looks at me through a young boy’s eyes and tries to speak. I take his hand.

​

I know, Dad.

​

I know.