My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents by Jonathan Silin (free novels .txt) 📗

said and what should remain unspoken. Foremost among the unspoken subjects is human suffering, whether caused by illness, intentional cruelty, or systemic injustice. Today, I want to make up for all that was left unsaid. My educational commitment is compensatory. Troubled memories of the YIVO, the shopkeepers with indelible numbers on their arms, the refugees who came to rest in our building, do not lead me to censor-ship and protectionism. Rather, they prompt consideration of how adults might create opportunities for children to talk about the difficult knowledge they acquire during their early years. Beyond the mandates of the formal curriculum or our beliefs about child development, our willingness to listen and respond to the children’s lived experience is shaped by our own histories. How did we learn to manage aggression, sexuality, and sadness? What patterns of loss and recuperation, separation and dependence did we subscribe to as children?

This difficult work is essential to piercing the kind of social amnesia that permeated my childhood. It is undertaken to engage children in authentic conversations about the world they will inherit and to pro-mote their active commitment to social justice, which seemed to get such short shrift in my own upbringing.

7

The Other Side of Silence

When we are writing and the pencil

breaks, suddenly the content of our writing

disappears and goes into hiding, and the

pencil that we really did not see before

comes out of hiding to reveal itself to us.

t . t e t s u o ao k i , “The Layered Voices of Teaching”

We live in a noisy world. The impatient sounds of fax and answering machines, telephone beepers and voice mail, punctuate our daily lives. There is little opportunity for silence to speak, and, when it does, we are often too busy to listen. In the summer of 1997, when I ride the bus between my home on eastern Long Island and the hospital in New York City where my father lies voiceless, I am especially aware of the intrusiveness of the new technologies. The cacophony of sounds on these weekly trips—the continuous ringing of cell phones and clicking of laptop computers, the driver’s shortwave radio, the attendant’s amplified words about fares and safety—is a stark contrast to the silence that reigns in my father’s room.

As is often the case with cancer, the events that lead up to my 105

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father’s surgery happen rapidly. I am made breathless by their speed

—the mysterious first symptoms, the new doctors, and technical language replete with numbers and unpronounceable words that need to be mastered within days, and, then, the 5:50 am bus for a final consultation with the oncologist. As I collect my parents at their apartment for the brief taxi ride uptown, my father moving slowly and cautiously, holding on to the arm of his home attendant, my mother lunges ahead in an anxiety-driven haze. As we walk up the clinic steps, the heels of her shoes make a loud slapping sound against the cement. The sound is testimony to her stubborn refusal to spend money on new, more sensible, and better fitting shoes. Her weight has dropped well below a hundred pounds, little wonder that her feet do not fill the shoes. Bob reminds her endlessly of the potential dangers of the slight heel given her precarious balance. But my mother thinks too little of herself and too much of my father to make a modest investment in her own safety.

During the long wait that morning to see Dr. Lee, my parents intermittently doze and stare into space. Finally ushered into the crowded laboratory-cum-examining-room, we try to arrange ourselves in some suitable manner. A half hour later Dr. Lee enters with an intern trailing behind. He greets my parents, whom he knows from prior visits, and barely gestures toward me when my father tries to make an introduction. After a brief examination, Dr. Lee proceeds to describe the operation in which he will remove either one or both sides of the larynx. It’s easy to see that my father, who initially wanted no other doctor but the well-known head of the clinic, has already transferred his trust to Dr. Lee, his associate. Dr. Lee returns this trust by looking at my father, and only at my father, throughout the interview.

Dr. Lee talks quickly and quietly, and I am having difficulty following all that he says. Hoping to take a few notes, perhaps even slow down his rapid-fire delivery, I reach for the backpack at my feet and manage to pull out a writing pad, only to find that my pen doesn’t work. No matter, for Dr. Lee never sees me struggling to organize my-m y fat h e r ’ s k e e p e r n 107

self and never stops talking. Feeling useless and reluctant to ask questions that might reveal my absolute ignorance about tracheotomies, shunts, voice boxes and the like, I retreat into the role of the good teacher who has invited a guest expert into his classroom. I restate the key points made by the presenter while suddenly realizing that, depending on the extent of the cancer, my father may well emerge from the operation unable to ever speak again. Dr. Lee is impatient with my attempt to process his information and snaps, “If he doesn’t have the operation, soon the tumor will close off the airway and it will be impossible for him to breathe. It’s not about whether your father can talk or not. You are asking the wrong question.” Dr. Lee makes me feel foolish beyond words. Our exchange about speech ends in my silence.

Shortly thereafter the interview is over, we all shake hands, and I promise to call on Monday with a decision about the surgery.

I can tell from my father’s expression that his decision has already been made. The multiple and painful biopsies, lab tests, and examinations of the proceeding weeks, combined with Dr. Lee’s certainty, have undercut his usual determination