Some Other Parents' Yes
The doctor says the o-word and it hangs like a guillotine in the air. Your father asks, If this was your child? The doctor says, Yes, of course. Without a doubt. Do I have your permission? Your mother, exhausted from delivering you, is crumpled on the bed, her open-backed gown still pushed up around her wet thighs. Your father looks at his wife, at her damp curls slicked back. She is too scared to cry. That's when your father says it. Yes. You imagine that tiny yes fluttering down from your father's lips like a falling maple seed. Sometimes it is a helpless yes, a grasping yes, a choking yes, a yes that wraps itself around his throat until it squeezes the last drop of air from his soft esophagus. Sometimes it is a mean yes, a cruel yes, a yes delivered in relief, a yes uttered simply so the decision will be behind him. And sometimes it is a no-yes, a yes that might have been conceived of as a no, a no that might have morphed into a yes, spontaneousl...