My husband refused to walk my 17-year-old daughter, his stepdaughter for nine years, at her high school senior night. “That’s something a real father should do,” he told her. But when her name was announced Thursday evening, her 79-year-old grandfather appeared with his walking cane and proudly accompanied her onto the court.

She stared at the fan going around.

“I just thought, I don’t know. I thought it didn’t matter anymore.”

“It doesn’t,” I said.

“Apparently it does to him.”

I put my hand on her ankle.

She let me leave it there.

She’s seventeen. The moments when she lets me leave my hand anywhere are fewer than they used to be.

“Who do you want to walk you out?” I asked. “Not who you’re supposed to want. Who.”

She thought about it longer than I expected.

Then she said, “Can Grandpa do it?”

My father is Duane Ostrem. He’s seventy-nine years old.

He milked Holsteins on the same quarter section east of town for fifty-one years. Twice a day. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year.