ABSTRACT
Lauro is silent at his 89th birthday party. He watches his children and grandchildren laughing and moving around the room. He has been a loving father, concerned with all his nine children, but even so he is a little emotionally distant from them. He had rarely beaten them, unlike other men of his generation, yet he was still the moral authority in the family and had the last word when it came to discipline. Perhaps that role kept him from becoming closer to his children. Lauro’s closeness to his little ones had changed into distance as they grew into teenagers with whom he just couldn’t talk, ever.
