What It’s Like to Have a Dad Who Codes

On my eighteenth birthday, I woke up to my phone ringing. Before “Hello?” could leave my lips, my dad launched into singing “Happy Birthday.” My mom was on the line, too, making attempts at harmonization. It was my first year away from home; so I hadn’t known about this corny, endearing tradition. All my birthday wishes thus far had been conducted face to face. But nowadays, I get this phone call annually—twice, in fact. One comes from my aunt—my dad’s sister—which leads me to believe the tradition originated on his side of the family.

I think our real, adult relationship began that year, the first I left home. My dad and I spent a lot of time together in the car, him shuffling me between home and college since I’d decided to never get a driver’s license. He worked in Tarrytown—a few towns away from my school—and he was charged with overhauling a healthcare company’s entire data infrastructure. It was his fourth programming job, I think.

On these rides, we’d talk about music and school, and when I got older, music and work. I was always in need of advice on the latter: how to deal with a professor who hated me, how to ask for a raise, how to quit. And always, without judgment, he’d tell me what I could do—never what I should do, an important distinction.