MY FATHER’S FACE 
By Melanie Mah

I have my father’s face to thank for being alive today. His big forehead and wide nose are what sealed the deal for my mother’s mom. My grandpa didn’t like him – saw him as an uneducated village widower not good enough for my mom. My grandpa didn’t teach her to write in English and pay for tutors, Christian private school, and university – he didn’t pave her way to white-collar jobs – just so she could run off with a guy like that. She’d already been teaching junior high school math for five years when my dad showed up in Hong Kong, his first wife buried in Red Deer, Canada, and three young kids already to his name. Who could blame her if she didn’t want the guy? But my grandma, a city girl who in ways had never left the village, took one good look at my would-be father’s face and knew he’d be a match for her daughter. Chinese folks can be funny that way. He wasn’t specific about details when I asked, but my dad said it was in his nose and forehead. I later learned that large, fleshy noses and high foreheads are said to indicate a person’s ability to make money. My dad had these, my mom moved to Canada the same year in which she met him, and twelve years later their last child was born with his forehead, his nose, and none of his moneymaking skills.

Melanie Mah won the 2017 Trillium Award for her novel The Sweetest One. Her work has appeared in Brick, Room, Prism International, The Humber Literary Review, and Best Canadian Essays 2019. She holds an MFA from the University of Guelph and is currently at work on an intergenerational memoir. Raised on the foothills of Alberta, she now lives in Toronto.