Without His Voice to Speak His Mind
My Father, Mr. Cool Man When my nephew Gabriel met my father for the first time, he was reluctant to converse with him because my father engaged little if at all with him. Gabriel was two and had just discovered his own voice, learning new words at an exponential rate. Even so, he just sat silent and observed my father, whose body lay stiff in bed, from a short distance away. On this recent visit, I wanted to have a conversation with my father. About how I decided to propose to Matthew. How I had decided through thick and thin, I had chosen him, when I had turned away from marriage from others in the past. Perhaps he would have offered advice about the difficulty of relationship and talked about the beauty of what he had found with Florencia. About how I have found happiness in working with new Moms in the early moments when they look into their babe's eyes as if to say to him or her, "I couldn't have imagined a more pure love than thi