First off, I thought it was a sprain. A really bad one.

The merlot-colored bruise on the palm of my daughter's hand was just for show, a harmless byproduct of all that swelling around the knuckle.

So she got kicked in the finger making a dive as a goalkeeper. Big deal. Second Child gets kicked all the time. It's soccer. Give her ibuprofen and an ice pack and everything is hunky dory.

How was I supposed to know it was broken?

When Mrs. G. and Firstborn traveled to the Mainland for a few days last month, I found myself at the tiller of daily life, and holding on as hard as I could.

The week ahead — and not even a full week, at that — looked easy: Feed Second Child and get her to and from her soccer activities. Wash a few clothes, walk the dog.

But there's fine print with such a simple assignment: Don't let anything bad happen on your watch.

Unless you have children, you would never know this. In the Mom vs. Dad world of parenting, there's an invisible scorecard. Nothing is too small to be recorded, no event or mishap too mundane.

Screw up and you get the raised eyebrow or a lecture.

Mrs. G. fully expected disaster. She had no faith in my survival instincts. Or whatever passed for common sense.

She had her reasons. My scorecard has a few blemishes.

There have been times I forgot to feed the girls lunch. Once, when she was young, Second Child fell off a jungle-gym slide and landed on her head.

On the afternoon Second Child broke her wrist — at soccer, naturally — the black mark went on my card even though I was sitting on the sidelines.

And there was the time I let Firstborn play softball with one eye swollen shut. But in my defense, it was her coach who hit her with a ball and the umpire did make her open it before she could bat.

My recent week with Second Child went fairly well, despite the fact that the break was on the first day.

I was an able, dashing Mr. Mom. Breakfast was microwave fresh, I only shrunk one T-shirt and we had enough hot dogs and beer to get through the week.

No one got sunburned — well, not too badly, anyway. No one starved. We shared snacks from McDonald's and Girl Scout cookies and we developed a system to get her goalkeeper's glove onto her hand. Slowly.

I like to think our time together was one of those father-daughter bonding experiences you hear mothers talk about. And while I never hear fathers discuss these kind of things, the warmth of the experience lingered for nearly two weeks — right until the pediatric orthopedist looked at the X-ray.

Good thing I was at work when that happened.

Fathers are helpless in a moment like that. There is no saving grace for them.

But Mrs. G. came to my rescue — again.

Bones heal. Stitches come out. And best of all, she isn't scoring with a permanent marker.

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.