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Main man

My father, David Kaiser, grew up a hardworking son of the soil on a dairy farm in Iowa. When he moved his family north, he found he was raising a son more interested in hockey than a herd of holsteins. And so dad became a coach for our Pee-Wee team.

Which was fine except he didn't know much about hockey beyond that people seemed to fight a lot - something he frowned on - and he couldn't skate. I still remember how he clung to the boards and how his folded ankles would almost collapse when he let go to blow his whistle. But dad became my hockey coach because he knew something instinctively about being a dad that I often struggle to remember - a dad gets up at 5am to drive you to practice, a dad straps on the goal pads when he gets home from work, a dad plays one more game even though his feet are sore and tired, a dad pushes you into a snowbank on the way back from the rink, and a dad lets you know in the mostly quiet moments that you spend together how much he loves you and is proud of you.

Apart from hockey, which my dad never quite got the hang of, he's always had an uncanny understanding of what 'a game' is all about. Not a competition, but a game - when dad got involved in whatever we were doing, it became more fun.

I remember how he could transform our bedrooms into magical palaces and alligator-infested moats with a few blankets and clothes pins, our house into a hide-and-seek arena the envy of the greatest illusionists, our yard into a neighbourhood nerve centre of keep away, pick-up soccer, fort-building, red rover, fox and goose.

And he does that now with my children: he sweeps them off their feet and transforms them into circus performers doing breath-taking acrobatic manoeuvres or he sets up a game of hallway tennis (what's a few gouges in the wall?) or he collapses on the floor in an amazing death-pirouette when a battleship gets hit. And I watch on in amazement, reliving how wonderful it felt to be swept off my feet and danced around the room.

Dad loves his god, his occupation, his wife, his children, his grandchildren, but don't ever throw him the modern-day challenge of prioritising this list. He would look dumbfounded: there are no grades, no levels, no halfways, no quality time margins in his date book. I've seen him laugh until he cried and I have seen him cry until he laughed. Even though we were never a family given to a lot of hugging, when dad hugs us, we carry the feel of it around for days.

I remember how, as a terrified 16-year-old, I called to tell him that I'd totalled the family car - the only car in the family that he'd saved so hard to buy. The only thing that mattered was that I was all right. And I also remember how he called me when I was a desolate and broken 25-year-old, after he found out I'd totalled my first serious love affair. He didn't say much, suggesting afterwards that we go to a baseball game together. And at that game, he said to me, without ever actually speaking the words, without ever taking his eyes off the pitcher, how important I was to him, how he loved me and how he knew how wonderful life would always be, in spite of it all.

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