My father’s handwriting became smaller before anyone told me he was ill

Dear Delyara, My father writes me one letter every month. He refuses email because he says handwriting makes people choose words more carefully. I moved abroad twenty years ago, and his envelopes have followed me through four apartments, one marriage, one divorce, and two countries. Tonight, I spread the last year of letters across my table and noticed something I should have seen earlier. His handwriting has been shrinking. January fills two pages. March becomes tighter. By June, he is writing near the center of the paper as though trying to conserve space. In the latest letter, his signature barely reaches the line. My sister called this afternoon to tell me he has Parkinson’s disease. He made her promise not to tell me until the diagnosis was certain because he did not want me “travelling home for every tremble.” I read his letters again after the call. He never mentioned dropping cups, struggling with buttons, or needing both hands to sign his name. Instead, he wrote about tomatoes, football, the neighbor’s loud dog, and how much rain had fallen. I used to think the blank space around his words meant he was becoming brief with age. Now it looks like evidence. My father was disappearing from the page in front of me, and every month I wrote back about my own life as though the only thing changing between us was the postage.