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what was next and what just happened. I was wiping my eyes, trying to get a grip. A friend of a friend of Alex’s was coming over to clean out our basement of baby gear and baby toys we no longer needed. She was about to become a mom and I was already deep in the trenches. I was trying to figure out how to explain to this woman I hardly knew that I was crying over a dead chicken, but not exactly, and I thought about sitting her down and saying, “You have no idea what you’re getting into.”

up for grabs
    A father, a daughter, a balloon. They are just now heading toward the car, hand in hand, toddling down the driveway. It is the same way every week. They’re going to the grocery store. They’ll get a free sample of cheese, they’ll get a free cookie, she’ll ride in the cart awhile, then get down and push. He’ll say, “Whose little girl are you?” She’ll say, “Daddy’s!”
    It is the same way every single week. Except there isn’t always a balloon.
    Alex is an older dad, well into his fifties. Before Anna arrived, he wondered if he could do it. He wondered if he’d have what it takes.
    On this day she’s barely three. She knows she has an older dad. “I think,” she’ll say, “he might be twelve.”
    The balloon is two days old, practically ancient in the life ofa standard-issue balloon. It is red. It’s tied to the end of a purple ribbon. It has fewer thoughts than a household pet, and yet, to a three-year-old, it is in every way a pet. You have to take care of it, and it won’t last forever. But for the time being it is all yours.
    The center of everything.
    “Would you like me to tie the balloon around your wrist?” Alex is saying, already knowing the answer.
    “I would like to hold it,” Anna answers. “I would like to hold my balloon in my hand.”
    “Okay, sweetie,” he says. “Well, hold on tight.”
    The balloon has lost a good bit of its helium, and there is no wind, and so the balloon appears to be walking one step behind her, at just her height. A pal if ever there was one.
    He is boosting her up into the car seat, they are fumbling with sleeves, straps, buckles. It’s hard to tell how it happens. A slow-motion replay probably could not verify the sequence of events. But the balloon! The balloon gets loose. The balloon is floating in the air, just above the father’s head. “Oh, no!” she is saying. “Oh … no!” He reaches into the air, tries to pluck it from the sky, but the balloon at that moment catches an up-draft and lifts higher, just beyond his grasp.
    “Daddy!” she is saying. “Oh, no!”
    He tries again; this time he leaps. But the balloon soars a foot higher, hangs there stupidly.
    “My balloon,” she cries, craning her neck so as to make a more direct appeal. “Please, balloon! Please, Daddy! Oh, my balloon…”
    Another father might say, “I told you, honey, I told you tohold on tight!” Another might think,
We have to hurry, we have a long list of groceries
. Another might think,
We can just buy another balloon at the store
.
    “That’s my balloon!” she is saying, looking into the sky with longing. “That is my best balloon….”
    This is one way a father, old or young, finds out who he is, with no time to decide which one he should be, which one he wants to be, which one might, perhaps, look better. When a balloon is loose, there is no time. You either charge after it, or you don’t.
    And so he finds that he is the kind of man who charges after a loose balloon, charges after it with courage and fight. He isn’t aware of his heroism, or his foolishness, he is too busy chasing a balloon. He hops, runs, reaches, trots over the grass and trips into the boxwoods. That balloon is either dancing or flirting or maybe a little of both. It doesn’t have enough loft to go into the clouds—no, it hovers, dragging its purple ribbon just beyond his pleading fingertips.
    “Get it, Daddy!” she is saying, cheering him on. “Oh, good job, Daddy!”
    It