Twenty years ago they placed him in my arms, and I was bitter at being the last one to see him, the last one to know I had a boy, the last one to observe that his hands were exactly like his father's.

I was drunk on anesthetic and sore from the recovery room nurse's lecture about "growing up" now that I had a baby to look after, couched in terms that made me realize she thought I was a teenage mother, but the panic attacks and the tubes kept me from fighthing back.

Twenty years…