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I wish you’d waited for me just one more time. I wish I could’ve said all of this to you in person, but you were so mad on the phone I wasn’t surprised when I saw you at the park, your arms crossed and your foot tapping, with those defiant eyes you make when your jaw’s locked up with all the things you don’t dare say.

I wish you’d waited for me so that I could tell you, without mumbling it or forcing it through some goofy grin, that I love you. I love the memory of you and I love the smell of you. I love it when you laugh so hard you breathe like a mule, and I love it when you show me how safe I can make you feel. I love Samuel and I love the life we gave him. I love that you pushed me toward our son from the beginning, and how you fought for me to see what it is I’d be missing if I didn’t go with you. You linger, Rachel. Long after you’re gone, you linger. In everything I do, in every decision I make, every day that gets cluttered with distraction and every day that doesn’t, there’s you, on the other side of the room with your arms crossed and your foot tapping. Sometimes you’re smiling.

You linger, Rachel.

The day Dr. Chiara told us about Samuel’s genetic profile, I saw something in your eyes. It only flashed for a moment, but I saw it. You hated me in that moment, the way you can hate the world when you’re alone and God’s not watching. With all your convictions and all your devotion to working against the genetic screening amendment, with all the things you preach to the women so they won’t go through with passive alteration therapy, you still hated me. You looked down the column and saw that I had donated that part to our son. I was the reason he was flagged for alteration, I was the reason the world saw our baby as a sociopath, a serial killer.

That day burped up and it’s all I could taste during my ride to the airport. That’s why I missed the exit. That’s why I missed the early flight and that’s why I was running for the train when we landed, tripping over myself from the weight of wanting, so much, for you to not hate me again.

I watched our son come into the world, I watched him take his first steps, say his first words. I watched him take down the playground bully with nothing but balled up fingers and a stare he got from your dad; girls from his class were giggling and whispering to each other when he blew his candles out last year. I was there for that, I was there when he pitched a fit at the store, I was there when he knocked over the monitor in the living room and started crying when he realized it wasn’t anything he could glue back together. I watched him grow, I watched him fly. I was watching him every time you thought I wasn’t. You brushed past me at the park. You said something but I couldn’t make it out. I wish you’d waited.

After you drove away, I walked to the clearing and saw it. Whoever you got to sculpt it did a job on it, Samuel got your eyes instead of mine – that was a good call. What did you say to the sculptor? How did you describe what you wanted? Because when I looked at that white, lifeless piece of marble all of what was Samuel in me faded away. I saw your smiling eyes looking back at me and he stopped being real for me. Why didn’t you wait? Maybe if you waited you would’ve told me about the statue before I ever got near the clearing. Maybe when you did I would’ve realized that looking at our unborn son, through your eyes, would make me forget everything I’d seen of him through mine. You linger, Rachel.

I talked to Jarede. They have an appointment with Senator Fin next Thursday, but he doesn’t think anything will come of it. Fin’s looking weak in the polls. He’s trying to move out to the left because running in the middle isn’t getting him anywhere. Anyway, Jarede doesn’t think anyone will take up the issue on its merits this term. The last census had growth rates creeping up to double digits. Twelve billion people in the world and most of them live here. I don’t know how many people are going to vote for predisposed sociopaths getting a pass on genetic screening.

I know what I promised when I joined the foundation, but that promise was to myself, not to you. That promise was to all the parents of unborn children who wouldn’t, or just couldn’t, let the government tell them what their kids are supposed to look like. I didn’t jump onboard because I couldn’t take my eyes off you during the interview, and I didn’t sign on to the rhetoric because your voice floated my chair. I knew what the stakes were. I could’ve taken the job across the street for three times the money, but I thought repealing an amendment would be a little more exciting than lowering torts on malpractice suits. That all changed the day you told me you were pregnant.

That day, I broke every promise I ever made. I took each one in my hand and smashed it against the nearest rock and started over. Nothing in my experience wasn’t going to be reexamined, second guessed and dissected before I applied it to being a father. Whatever promises I made to the foundation and the issue, whatever I said to all our contributors, took a back seat to the promises I was going to make to my son. I wish you’d waited, Rachel. I wish you’d waited for me to summon up the courage to tell you that I wanted my son. Here, with me, with us. I wish you waited long enough so I could talk you into passive alteration, talk you into leaving the issue in someone else’s hands and crossing a border with me.

Instead, we put up fictional posts to tell the world about a life that could’ve been – a life that could’ve been, if we hadn’t killed it. I’m not talking about Roe Vs. Wade, don’t even go there. You know that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about us, inventing the life of a child we never had while celebrating our righteousness and resolve. I didn’t feel like celebrating today Rachel, not after I saw that statue of Samuel, not after I could touch his cheek and look into his eyes.

I looked around the clearing and saw all the other statues of unborn children – monuments to their parents’ ideals. Some of them didn’t have names, just would-have-been birthdays etched into memorials devoted to lives not lived. We invent their lives in our own image and cast to the world what kind of normal day little Ponti, or adorable Jazmin, would have had despite her predisposition to schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and all I could think about were all the shitty days Samuel never got to have, all the days he would have doubted himself, kicked himself, wallowed in the horrible idea of himself, all of those days that would have ended with him coming home to us.

I’m done arguing eugenics and natural selection, Rachel. I’m done rejecting the government model specs for the human race, because at the end of the day I don’t care anymore. I don’t care about sanctions and tax liabilities for predisposed births. I don’t care because I don’t want my son, or his sons and their sons, to be born with an attached stigma. You wouldn’t have opted for passive alteration if there was no 29th amendment? If the government hadn’t taken a stand, you would’ve let Samuel be born with that predisposition? I don’t want to fight for my rights anymore, Rachel. I want to fight for my kid. I want to tell him, thirty years from now, that we chose to have him instead of a higher level of debate, that we chose him and not an ideal.

I don’t want to imagine any more first steps, any more tips on surviving high school, any more driving lessons. I don’t want to imagine any of it, any more. I want to live it, Rachel. I want to go to graduations, I want spilled milk and knocked over monitors, I want to throw birthday parties with balloons and cake and little girls whispering as the candles get blown out. I wished you’d waited. I wish you’d waited long enough for me to tell you that I was done with all the tension and all the grief, all the anger and the resentment. But I can’t tell you that any more. Not after you showed me the statue of a stranger and called it our son.

I’m sending Jarede my resignation tonight. Turc’s having breakfast with me in the morning. I’ll make sure you get the house. You linger, Rachel. You’ll always linger.

– K