A Timex Iron Man watch was the only object I knew my dad had when he was incarcerated because it was the only thing I saw of his when we visited.

Every other week, we would drive down from within miles of the beaches of Connecticut to within miles of the beaches in New Jersey to visit him. Since it was winter the six months he was away, we never stopped at the beach there, but the sandy grass, light gray roads, and repeating blur of dusty birch and loblolly pines that passed by the backseat window of the van as my mom drove, made it clear to me that we were near the ocean, even though I never saw it.  

During the twelve days in between visits when we weren’t driving from one end of the tristate to the other, life was normal and made up of the things you did as a family with a seven- and nine-year-old, like going to sport practices. Before my dad was away, my brother Michael would get dropped off at practices like the other kids, but at some point, my mom and I transitioned to staying and passively watching rather than leaving. Anxiety hit all of us differently, and while mine arrived as going to the nurse each day to say I had a stomachache and ask if my mom could come pick me up, Michael’s came as not wanting to be left at practice. Basketball practice meant sitting on the gray rubber floor listening to screeching sneakers, inconsistent bouncing, and muffled voices from other courts that were hidden by giant blue, plastic curtains, but baseball practice took place at the beach with only a low chain link fence and small parking lot separating us from the coast with its golden marshes and purple glacial erratic rocks. 

My mom would bring activities for me to do during practice, which is how I learned that when you do arts and crafts on a metal sports bleacher, the ridges in the metal press through and make straight and orderly impressions in the paper. The lines taught me that not everything that is orderly is intended.  On the day that comes to mind.  I was using my watercolor pencils while sitting next to my mom and Mr. Cantey, a quiet man with a daughter and son the same age as me and my brother. The Canteys were all quiet and small. Part of their basement was full of shelves of a rare book collection, stored in the dark since they were actually rare and not just collectibles out for display. 

Since everyone else dropped off their kids, we were the only three watching practice that day, but I don’t know if it counts as watching since I sat with my back to the field, using the bleacher row above me as a work surface while facing toward the Sound. The bench continued to conduct the cold no matter how long you sat on it.

“My dad has the same watch as you,” I said to Mr. Cantey.

There was a key difference between my dad’s watch and Mr. Cantey’s. My dad’s was engraved on the back with his name, Fairton FCI, and I’m assuming some sort of number. I’m assuming Mr. Cantey’s did not have the engraving on the back. My dad let me look at the engraving when we visited him once, and I looked at how they had just blasted through the info that would normally be lightly engraved on the back of the watch to make way for what needed to be documented.  When my dad got home a few weeks later, he had the watch with him, like a party favor from prison. Once my dad was back, he would wear the watch on weekends and vacations, which I found odd at the time that he’d want to risk reminding himself of his time away, but as an adult, I realize there were probably constant reminders.

This moment sticks out because it is the only time in the six months my dad was away that I remember mentioning him to anyone.

I remember there was a pause, and I don’t remember if Mr. Cantey said anything to acknowledge what I said, but it went back to a normal conversation quickly, and I went back to my watercolor pencils, feeling the cold penetrate my hands as I pushed down to hold the paper in place.

As a child, I understood not to talk about my father to other kids. I was told they would not understand it, so I never mentioned it to another kid until fifth grade when we were dissecting owl pellets, when I told my friend Griffin. “Why are you lying?” she said, as she waved over the teacher’s assistant who stood in her khakis, turtleneck, and stitched vest while Griffin explained to her that I was lying. I didn’t break eye contact with my owl pellet, separating out the little bones of mice that proved something had been alive and was now not only dead, but digested and stripped of all nutrients, and placed the blue gray bones neatly on a white paper chart, like an adult working in some museum full of dead things. The teacher’s assistant must have said something, but I have no idea what, and then without additional fanfare, Griffin and I went back to continuing to work our ways through the clumps in front of us until we each just had a pile of brown mashed up fur left on a gleaming silver tray. After that I didn’t tell anyone until college.

There were certain adults where I was explicitly told that they did not know, and were not going to know, where my dad was. It was a long list that included all of my dad’s aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, and their friends and neighbors. It included no one from my mom’s side. I chose to extend the rule to everyone and erred on the side of caution by never mentioning my dad unless specifically asked, with the time at practice, when if baseball was being played it must have been close to the six months being complete, being the only exception. With the open white sky above, I felt small and exposed on the metal bench. I felt like I has said something I shouldn’t have, something that could make my mom uncomfortable or make her talk to me quietly after about how we don’t talk about things like that. I wouldn’t have felt warm again until we were in the car.

I learned in adulthood that there were certain adults that I probably should not have referenced my dad around, like the mom of one of my classmates who asked that her daughter not be placed in groups with me in school due to my situation. I also learned there were adults where it would have been fine.

When I was twenty-five and finally talked to my dad about his being away, he told me “When I got back, I was really nervous the first time I went to one of Michael’s baseball games. I was walking across the street from the St. Margaret’s parking lot over to the field and thought about turning around, but Mr. Cantey came right up to me and shook my hand and said, ‘Welcome back.’”