"Naw Che-bay," I say wistfully, "it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing."
Sarah's pulled out the Olympic Torch, cleaned it up and displays it in the corner beside the blanket basket with the girls middle names on it.
"Daddy carried the torch in 1996," Sarah explains, "there were lots of people. It was a big deal!"
"Well, I'm pretty fast," Che responds.
"Watch this!" she screams, streaking down the hall, bouncing off the wall before racing back to the Living Room.
"That's pretty fast," I agree.
Sarah and Che settle on the sofa for their nightly routine of completing a "Grateful Journal" and reading books from the Library.
Smiling, I watch them before slipping off to smoke Weed.
Afterwards we kiss our daughter goodnight, collapse on the sofas and get lost in Netflix, Hulu, Paramount or Disney.
Sarah quickly consumed in texts with Laurel, who's moving again, Maddie, who's graduating College and moving soon, and Cass, who is nowhere to be found and won't respond to messages.
It's far too much for me to keep up with and I find myself staring at the Torch.
A mashup of images, sights, sounds, touches and feelings explode in my brain and I relive everything about that day.
The calm of the bus we sit on before being released. Thousands of people lining the street. Faces in the crowd. Prideful smiles on Homeless men and woman passing the Torch around in the shelter after I'd finished. Hanging it in the Breakfast Club for the next year for anyone who wished to enjoy it. Then put away until Sarah decides it's time to bring it out again.
A nanosecond, maybe it was really a thousand years, later I'm staring at my wife on the other sofa doing her College homework while texting the girls and watch our show, absolutely loving my life.
The next night at dinner, Che announces, "I told them that my Daddy was in the Olympics."
"Who?" Sarah and I ask.
"Saylor and Zane," she replies eating a white chocolate peanut butter cup.
Saylor is her best friend.
Zane is her latest boyfriend.
The last one wouldn't play with her during recess so she dumped him for Zane.
Che wears a tee shirt she painted the 5 colored rings symbolizing the Olympics she made along with her class at school.
"What was their reaction?" Sarah asks.
Che rolls her eyes, shrugging her shoulders and asks if she may watch television.
Sarah shrugs her own shoulders.
Che slides away from the table so Sarah and I lock eyes and laugh.
"Well, she told them you were in the Olympics," Sarah laughs, "not that you carried the Torch."
"What's the difference?" I ask.
Sarah rolls her head.
"Da!" Che calls from the sofa and its time to snuggle with her for a while before her bath.
So we rush to clean the dishes for family time on the sofa, beside the basket of blessings and baskets, next to the Torch in the corner.
