Looking back, there were a lot of little representations of my dad that we created while he was away: the Beanie Baby that sat on my bed, the keychain with his photo I kept hidden in my backpack, the matching friendship bracelets I made. Most of these were personal, not shared or acknowledged by others, even those in my family.

The one representation that was acknowledged within my family was the iron playing piece in the Monopoly board game, which each time we would play, we’d place in the jail square on the board, acknowledging as we played that we were either just visiting him or were fictionally incarcerated along with him, getting out by rolling double or paying $50, while he steadily remained in there for the duration of all of our games over six months.

I think we chose the iron because my dad liked to clean. We were told his job in the prison was to help clean the significantly more prison-like maximum security prison that was across the parking lot from his minimum security prison.

The representations helped us, or at least they helped me, making him a tangible part of our life while he wasn’t, and making it so that at least in the case of the iron, we all collectively acknowledged him.