Dad and I are sitting on our blacktop driveway when he says, "Do you know how to make a match burn twice?"

 

It’s the week before I start tenth grade. I’ve got to learn how to light a match, so I can survive chemistry lab. It would be too mortifying to confess that I can’t light my own Bunsen burner.

 

I’ve always been a good girl. Dad, a cigar and pipe smoker despite the fact that he’s a heart surgeon, told me not to play with matches. I followed his rules.

 

It’s unusual for me to spend time alone with Dad. For one thing, he’s barely home. He leaves early in the morning on his hospital rounds. He’s gone until late at night because he’s in solo practice. There’s no one to back him up.

 

But match striking is his province.

 

"Do you know how to make a match burn twice?" repeats Dad.

 

I shake my head. I’m a logical girl. Logic tells me that a match is spent once it has been struck and blown out. What Dad asks is impossible.

 

Dad smiles.

 

"I’ll show you," he says. Then he strikes a kitchen match on its box. Then blows it out.

 

"Hold out your hand," he says.

 

I obey.

 

He lowers the match until it touches the tip of  my finger. 

 

I leave my finger there for a moment. Too stunned to move. I don’t cry out. I don’t say anything. I don’t even feel anything.

 

"See, I told you I could do it." Dad looks relaxed, like he has forgotten the pressures of his busy medical practice.

 

I am still frozen.

 

"Okay, let’s have you practice striking matches," he says.

 

We go on as if nothing has happened. There has been no breach of the Hippocratic oath. No breach of the bond between parent and child.