Growing up, my mother was the nurturer and my father the disciplinarian. His was a thankless job, I’m sure, and it wasn’t until I was grown that I was able to appreciate the love required of his role.

My brother and I laugh now remembering some of the threats he’d made when we were kids, though we hadn’t found them funny at the time.

"Boy, I’m gonna tear you a new asshole if you don’t straighten up."

It was likely because of his role as disciplinarian that as kids we were never close to our father. There was a time when I was too afraid even to speak to him. Only in the last four or five years has our relationship matured into friendship, and we speak now on topics I would never dare mention to my mother—sex, masturbation, threesomes. There is nothing I could say to make my father flinch.

And yet it took nearly eight months to gather the courage to tell him about my legal trouble.

That afternoon, on the drive to my parents’ house, I fantasized about death. I couldn’t decide which would be more devastating to them: the despair of losing their son in a car crash or the despair of learning that their son would soon be going to prison for downloading child pornography.

Eventually I settled on the truth that one selfish act cannot right another.

After dinner, my mother excused herself while my father and I retired to the living room to watch television. During a commercial break, I turned to him and asked if he’d be busy the following Monday.

"No. Why?"

My eyes began to swell, but I was relieved to have committed to telling him.

"I need you to do me favor and go with me somewhere."

My dad, who’d been half asleep a minute earlier, sat up in his chair.

"I need you to come with me to see a lawyer."

And then he was beside me on the couch with his arm around my shoulder, his voice soft and delicate, a voice he seldom used when my brother and I were kids.

"Of course I will. Whatever you need. What happened?"

"I downloaded some things I wasn’t supposed to—pornography." I couldn’t bring myself to add the word "child."

I gave him the rundown of everything that had happened: the search warrant, the interrogation, the target letter. He held me as I cried and whispered encouraging nonsense about getting everything sorted out, things I knew weren’t true but that I’d craved to hear.

The sight of my tears, when she’d returned from the other room, startled my mother, and she asked what was wrong. Not wanting to upset her, my father replied with something vague. She didn’t ask for clarification, only sat on the other side of me and put her hand on mine.

"It’ll be okay. Just don’t worry about it. I don’t want you to get sick from worrying."

Which made me cry even harder, for she didn’t even know what was wrong. She might have believed I’d contracted HIV like her brother. It didn’t matter. Her only concern, and that of my father, was for my wellbeing.