Dad and the Beep Game

I recently came across it on a shelf in the garage, the one reserved for retired Frisbees and softballs. It was lying on its side, bound with bands of masking tape to hold it together.

I'm sure there's a proper name for this relic of our family's past, but we don't know for sure what it is. We assume it's an old automobile horn, one we seized years ago at a flea market.

This gizmo, exiled now, was inextricably tied to a father-daughter ritual known as "the Beep Game." It was great sport that involved no technology, no batteries, no extensive planning, and just one piece of equipment: that old horn.

On rainy Saturdays or bleak winter nights, my husband and his daughters would take their places in the family room — Vic on the sofa, the three girls sitting in a sisterly jumble on the carpet near him. And the weird sound of that horn would announce that they were at it again.

I wasn't part of it. No, this activity was their special time to consider and answer questions lofty and trivial. And the competition was fierce.

In the early years, earning that beep was the equivalent of getting a gold or silver star on your penmanship paper, back when penmanship mattered.

How deft was dad, the questioner, at stretching those young minds just enough to challenge, but not enough to frustrate them. When the answer was right, the weird blast of that horn announced the triumph.

As the girls got older, the questions got harder, the victories sweeter, the laughter louder. Even when the storms and tempests of adolescence rocked our household, the Beep Game continued.

How my husband loved those sessions in the family room with his girls.

But one by one, those daughters went off to other lives, lives defined by dorm rooms on ivy-draped campuses, not the family room sofa. Ultimately, there was no one left to play the Beep Game.

We couldn't bear to dispose of that crazy horn, though. Too many precious memories attached to that old heap of metal and rubber.

Its home on the garage shelf now is itself a powerful metaphor for my husband's father-emeritus status.

As it turns out, our daughters have loving remembrances of the Beep Game. Those hours have a special place in the clutter of images they have brought to adulthood. They all insist that they remember the game far more vividly than family trips that cost an arm and a leg or forced marches through museums. Amy, our middle daughter, still recalls that one of her winning Beep Game answers was Asia Minor, even though she can't remember the question.

Our daughters are now shockingly near middle age, married and with children of their own. But they seem to understand how lucky they were to have a dad who delighted in their company — and also was hardwired to be their silver-templed teacher, knight, and protector.

Sometimes, after their visits home, I watch my husband linger in the driveway until his daughters' cars, carrying their own precious cargo, vanish around the bend in the road.

There is a slight sag to his shoulders as he steps back into our world, now down to two. Yes, he still misses active duty parenting.

This father also knows that the true tapestry of family life is humble, not grand, a patchwork quilt, not a silk duvet.

And yes, it's also an old automobile horn on a garage shelf.