I watched my son shave for the first time through a video call

Dear Delyara, I work abroad and have missed so many firsts that my family has stopped announcing them as firsts. Tonight, my sixteen-year-old son called because he had cut his chin shaving and wanted to know how to stop the bleeding. I laughed before I realized what had happened: my boy had begun shaving without me. He balanced the phone against the bathroom mirror while I showed him how to press tissue against the cut and shave with the direction of the hair instead of against it. His mother shouted instructions from another room. He rolled his eyes exactly the way I used to roll mine at my father. When the call ended, I opened the cabinet in my room and looked at my own razor. My father taught me to shave by standing behind me with one hand over mine. I remember the smell of his soap more clearly than his voice. I left home six years ago to pay for my son’s education, and the money is doing exactly what I intended. His school fees are covered. He has a laptop. He speaks better English than I do. Still, tonight I wanted to trade one month’s salary for the cut on his chin to have happened while I was standing beside him instead of inside a phone balanced against a mirror.