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.

I lay awake in the dark listening to him breathe. And I wondered what kind of woman sets up her own husband to be embarrassed in front of the whole school.

I didn’t have a good answer.

I still don’t. Not entirely.

On Thursday, I cleaned teeth from eight to four.

Mrs. Bauer, who’s eighty-four and has had the same partial plate since the Carter administration, told me she’d be at the game.

“I wouldn’t miss senior night,” she said, around my mirror and my scaler. “I haven’t missed one

since my Jim’s sister played. That was 1974. They played in bloomers back then. Or near enough.”

Everybody goes to senior night in our town.

Our school’s a consolidated district. Three little towns that merged back in the nineties when none