You can look around most any place on the Internet to see warm and fuzzy loving things being written about “Dad,” as we move closer to Father’s Day. A blog post about it, has really been farthest from my mind. I think, almost constantly about that expectation to call your dad on Father’s Day. What will I say? I do this crazy thinking mental dance with myself every year, and usually, Father’s Day comes and goes, and I have a host of reasons why I didn’t call. The reality if I’m honest however, is that almost frozen, I sit and wait for the day to pass- dreading it’s arrival, and then feeling shame that it passed with no action on my part. 2011 will be different however, starting with this open letter/ blog post.
Readers may be alarmed to read such a headline! “Faggot” and “Boy” are not terms I use very commonly (if ever at all combined). At 53 years old, I don’t relate really to either in a way, and in another regard, there is a 12 or 13 year old sissy boy inside of me still. He stops me from making that phone call. He is the one who is frozen, and I end up convinced that I can not speak as the adult me, before or without giving that kid me, a voice.
My father is alive and doing pretty well. He lives out from from the city a ways, and we get together for dinner a few times a year. Every time we do, we say, we need to do this more often, but for both of us the time slips away.
My father loves me very much and he is extremely proud of me. I love him too, and unlike a number of my friends who still feel very unloved by their dads, I’m glad I know how much he loves me. But there is some part of me- where I am still trying to measure up, and be “enough” of a man to please my father.
My dad was, I believe, always uncomfortable with me in a way. I wasn’t very masculine, I didn’t excel at sports, nor was I interested in many very “boy” things. But today, I think much of that has changed. While I don’t think he is thrilled to have a gay son (actually he has two gay sons), he has grown to a level of acceptance that is good. While I wish he were a bit more willing to be an enthusiastic gay rights supporter, I have come to accept that coming out for the parent of a gay child is a process for the parent too. As a son, I offer my father respect and love when I allow him his process, and accept him unconditionally too (since that is what I want from him). This may seem an odd idea! Too often, I see gay guys who are sad and hurt because their parents don’t start waving a rainbow flag the minute the child comes out to them. They (the son or daughter) will not accept anything less than full unconditional acceptance, yet, their demand for it, and the timeline upon which that acceptance must come about, is the exact opposite of offering acceptance of the parent.
As a kid very many factors influenced how I perceived myself. Any sense that I had of being a sissy faggot boy wasn’t due exclusively to what I did or didn’t receive from my father, And yet, I’m aware that here I am on the precipice of Fathers Day possibly holding him responsible entirely. Maybe one of the greatest gifts that a gay kid can give his or her father, is to let them off the hook a bit. In other words, it is time to stop being angry because a parent didn’t think we were enough, because we were so sure that they weren’t enough either. Does that make sense?
That was then, and this is now, and no matter what issue- for both straight and gay, our current relationships with our fathers are the products of our entire lives and many many things that have or have not happened. I heard a writer talking on the air yesterday, about believing his father didn’t love him, because his father never read anything he had written. Turned out the father couldn’t read and the son never knew it till the father had died. Getting what we need from our father, isn’t a gay or straight thing, even though it is possible for a gay guy to look around and falsely believe that all of the straights had great relationships full of love from their fathers. Truth is, we were (and are) all doing the best we could do,
Today I believe every boy probably leaves childhood believing he didn’t receive everything he needed from his dad. Perception of what we did and didn’t get, is subjective. And, at some point, part of growing up is learning to parent ourselves and see our fathers as human beings who were sons once too. Today, I believe that when I choose to see my father for who he is today, and what our relationship is today, I set the stage for knowing that he can offer me exactly what I need from him as his adult son.
That was then, and this is now, and today, as I said above, I have a father who loves me and is extremely proud of me. He steps outside of his comfort zone and seeks to understand what is important to me, and while we don’t share political philosophies, I see him seek to really hear me and value my thoughts and ideas. I see his ideas challenged in his thinking, sometimes in extremely small ways, but I see him take baby steps forward, even when some of his base religious views are confronted. And through it all, baby steps forward and even a few steps back, he does love me and he is proud of me. What more could I really ask for?