Parenting is a series of fleeting moments drifting by like hayseeds in the breeze as you helplessly try to record and recall everything in the hopes that will make it last until suddenly your child is grown and the charade is up and they come to understand that, really, you knew nothing and they never really will either.

Some moments are clear milestones. First step, first words. Others are hard to nail down. Like my boss was talking to me the other day about the last time you ever pick them up – I guess this was a meme. So much happens and we don’t realize it’s important until so much later.

After my boss and I talked I realized I didn’t know if he meant physically picked up or picked up, like, car pick them up, but I also realized I vividly recalled both for my only child, my daughter. So I made a POAP for each.

The first POAP was for the time I picked her up in my arms on her 10th birthday; the image was a charcoal sketch of a pumpkin pie I did on the train. She said she was too big and I couldn’t benchpress her anymore. She’d been throwing a fit because someone had stuck their finger in the frosting before she had a bite of cake and I took this as an opportunity to be silly to right her mood. Maybe that’s why she said it, because she knew a little of my silly would snap her out of it.

It did. I laid on my back and she laid on my stomach and I lightly tossed her in the air a few times until she was giggling and a little chocolate crumb on her chin dropped into my eye and then I stood and bear hugged her and spun her around and squeezed her and roared like a lion and blew raspberries on her tummy. Then I feigned a sore shoulder and said, wow, you are getting big, I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that again! And her little lower lip quivered like a worm in the rain until I assured her I was only joking and of course I would, that holding her in my arms was as easy as pumpkin pie and why would anybody not want pumpkin pie.

The second POAP was for the time I picked her up at 3AM when she was 17; the image was a watercolor of a chocolate cake I did one night when I couldn’t sleep. She’d called us sobbing and said her friends were being mean. My wife had taken a pill that night so it was on me to throw on some sweatpants and drive across town. When she got in the backseat I could smell the alcohol but I knew better than to bring that up. I probably should have known better than to ask what was wrong and just leave her to her phone, but I could see tears on her cheeks so I couldn’t help myself.

The question sparked a tirade about her stupid, selfish friends that she wished would all die and other horrible things. I said I was sure they would all make up once everyone calmed down, and she screamed at me for taking their side and said she was sick of having to forgive them, they were awful people, scum bitch cuntbags who don’t even care that the world is going to hell and that they were all going to suffer as adults from the diminishing returns of Western society, et cetera, et cetera. Apparently they’d all laughed at her and prodded her stomach when they found her eating a piece of cold pizza in the kitchen by herself. And the worst part was they were right, she was such a useless, fat piece of shit! She was never going to amount to anything!

I said she wasn’t fat and that I still blamed all those magazines her mom let her read when she was younger and she said I didn’t know anything and if I thought she wasn’t fat then I had a totally warped perception of reality because she knew she’d gained weight and how could she ever trust me about anything if I wouldn’t be honest with her and just tell her she was fat. She screamed and screamed that if I didn’t tell her she was fat she was going to stick her finger down her throat right then and there and throw up all over my car. She banged the back of my seat and it was dark and I was still groggy and cranky and I almost hit some moron jaywalking, and then I screamed back what the fuck was wrong with her I almost just killed somebody.

A sudden calm as she asked me to pull over. I said I wasn’t going to pull over and she started screaming until I did pull over, and she ran out of the car to the nearest tree and did it. She stuck her finger down her throat and as she gagged she yelled at the car that isn’t this what I wanted, isn’t that why I was yelling at her, why I was angry, because she was a fat pig? I wanted her to throw up all that disgusting pizza and ice cream she’d eaten because she had no self control because she was a big fucking loser, just like me.

I was angry but also horrified (I saw porch lights come on) so I scrambled out of the car and tried to put my hand on her back to calm her down, but the second I touched her she slapped me away and spit vomit in my face and then stared me in the eyes as she stuck her finger down her throat and gagged and yelled, look I’m doing this just like you wanted! This is what you want! I yanked her arm out of her mouth and I could see her wince and I immediately regretted it. I said in a hushed whisper, what the fuck is wrong with you get back in the fucking car, as she coughed and sniffed and snobbed.

A brief moment of silence. She glanced around and probably like me could feel the eyes of the neighborhood. I repeated, still in a low voice, get back in the fucking car. Now. Or I’m never giving you a ride home again.

She wiped her face on her shirt and laughed and said I would never have to worry about that. You’ll never have to worry about that, she said, louder. Then screaming. I never want another ride from you ever! I never want anything from you!. And I screamed back that was just fucking fine with me. I said she should learn to deal with her shit instead of asking for help and then lashing out at everyone. And fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, until she was worn out enough to stumble back in the car and I could see people peering through the blinds and I screamed, don’t worry everybody it’s just my daughter acting like a lunatic! And sped off.

I only stuck to one of those promises (the wrong one) – I never did pick her up in my arms and swing her around again (I hurt my knee that year and then she hit middle school and embraced her future as a cool kid), but when my wife found out about the car episode she was furious and said, from now on if our daughter needed a ride she would take care of it, and what was wrong with me, and she really meant it, and none of us ever really talked about that night, one of a series of repressed incidents that were not the only cause but a primary cause to get us where we are today, living in three separate cities and cordial phone calls on holidays or when somebody dies but never any silly, never any pumpkin pie.