FATHER'S DAY

Oh daddy we mommies watch you through the sprinklers’ mist casting rainbows on summer, thumbing iPhones—who’s the daddy? Not a single daddy or a Sunday daddy but an everyday daddy, a daddy kept by those scrappy three who climb muscled calves as if you were a jungle gym. We read your hieroglyphs: Shaved head, river veins, sweat sliding down the gullet of your cheekbones and into a tuft along your chin. Christ, it is hot on the playground. While you chat up the island nannies we sip our sangria from temperature-controlled environmentally responsible cups, pin you for a straight edge ten years clean. Daddy, your children chant, pick me up daddy take me for a ride daddy toss me a ball daddy spin me like a prize: daddy daddy daddy daddy whoops. Your kids are eating glass shards again. Beads of asphalt. Splattered water balloons. Pretzels ground into dirt. Pica, daddy? A child stomps a rocket launcher; Styrofoam shoots in the air. Everyone wants in. They aren’t triplets, your one-two-three, but they are close enough to wonder how they all came from one mother. Really, who has the time? She must make some money. Your wife. Your son is climbing the chain link, barefoot. Your daughter has fallen off the monkey bars—daddy!—but you’re there, quarterbacking your toddler in order to seize your daughter by the arm. A gasp escapes from the bench where we sit cross-legged in our Bermudas, stroller mommies with enormous hooded sun shields. Did you see that? We whisper down in a game of telephone, our eyes wide as kiddie pools, he could’ve yanked it right out of the socket, dislocated her shoulder, if my husband ever, someone should call child services. Only she is fine. Juggling the two your third is stuck on the fence, a kitten calling from a tree, daddy that means you. We leap, offer woozy breasts—puffy, eager hands. We inhale, your smell is jalapeño, and you look at us, grateful, indifferent, passing offspring. You dip down to retrieve your straw hat trampled by wet feet, but in the instant it takes to complete this motion your son skitters down the fence, scraping his shins and somehow his scalp is bleeding. Mommies come prepared. Wipes and Band-Aids and lollipops and antiseptic cream, what does your wife do? We don’t ask but study the pop of your glutes as you crouch to your son—a catcher, maybe?—pony up, you say; what doesn’t break us makes us stronger. Meanwhile your other children have adopted us like city pigeons, pecking grimy fingers into bags of cheddar bunnies and we relish the attention. Doesn’t your daddy feed you? We giggle, we blow noses, we hand out bubbles and sidewalk chalk; we spot bandannas blooming from the pocket of your army shorts. Breathless are the mommies who wait and pray for the playdate where you take us home to gag us and cinch up our beating wrists.

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