Here it comes again. Fathers Day. What I remember most from my childhood moments with my father was his incredible strength. He had huge biceps and used to delight in picking me and my step-sister up with one finger. We would hold onto his hand and he would lift us up off the ground like we were light as a feather. He took great pride in his strength, so when we giggled and gleefully asked him to do it again, he would smile and raise us even higher.
My parents separated when I was 3, and my mother moved to another city. I was 5 hours away, and back then calling someone long distance was pretty expensive. So I mostly saw and spoke to my father when I would see him during all the school holidays and the summers. He would light up when I came off the plane and, in the beginning, cry without shame when I left. It was odd experiencing this incredibly muscular “man’s man” bending down on one knee to get to my level as a 7 year old and just cry on my shoulder.
Becoming the Son he Didn’t Have
I became the son he did not have until years later when my brother was born when I was ten. He loved horses, loved to ride and taught me how to ride. I got a pony before I was born. I had no fear of horses and he took that as a great source of pride. He would put me on horses or ponies unbroken because at my young age I was not as heavy. He would have a lead rope on the horse, and neither of us knew what such a young horse was going to do, but he knew I wasn’t afraid and I knew he would save me if anything started to happen. He also taught me how to weld, shoe horses, top tobacco, haul hay, hammer a nail, change the oil in a vehicle, and drive a tractor…all at a very young age. Never once did he say “that’s only for boys”. I just grew up knowing I could do or try anything I wanted.
My father also taught me a deep and abiding love for God and the Bible. He would read me Dr. Seuss books as a bedtime story, but also stories out of the Bible. He spoke about the people mentioned in Biblical stories as if they were just living right down the road. He loved memorizing the Old Testament and the odd parts of it like who “begat” who. My other example of a man, my stepfather, was nothing like this and that is another story. Suffice it to say that at the time my father won hands down when it came to being a “good” man.
Early on Things Were Simple
I missed a lot of the strife most people have with their father as I was growing up, because we just didn’t have the time to spend together. He was a truck driver, so even when I was there he was gone a lot. The time we did have together was precious. I did well in school, loved the things he loved, and I adored my father so there wasn’t a lot to fight about growing up.
When I was in eighth grade there was a horrific tragedy in our family and my father adopted his late brother’s three children. I remember I was there when he was taking care of some paperwork and he took me out to eat alone. He wanted me to know that even though he was adopting three of my cousins (he had already adopted my step-sister) that his love for me wouldn’t change at all. I thought that was odd, because I thought “well of course not, you are my father”.
Two Stories, One Often Better Than the Other
There’s always two stories when someone talks about their parents. There is the way your parents treat you and feel about you when you are young, and then the way they treat you as you move into adulthood. It’s rarely the same. Often one is better than the other.
I remember the love and adoration my father had for me when I was young. He loved my mother dearly, and was heartbroken when she left. I think when I was young I reminded him of what they had created together. I was his daughter, but I was also a small piece of my mother he still had.
When I went to college I discovered that I was a lesbian and there was no getting around it. Even though I tried to live with a boyfriend for a while, I remember the unexplainable joy in my father’s eyes when I brought him home the first time. However I soon realized that my emotional needs were not going to be met with a man, but with a woman.
Sometime’s There Isn’t A Big Blow Out, It’s A Slow Release
I wish I could say that we had this great love for each other and had a big blowout and then we made up, like fathers and children do in the movies, but no when my stepmother asked if I was a lesbian I told her yes. She told me that she would always feel the same about me. That was the last “real” conversation I had with her. My father and I never talked about my being gay. There was just this slow release, like a fire that burns down to the embers and then just goes away with no one to remember the warmth of the flames.
It has been over 35 years since that conversation with my stepmother. I tried to keep up a relationship with them. First it was they didn’t call or invite me for Christmasand my birthday. Then there was just less and less communication. My family does not talk about things in general, and though my father gets asked about why he doesn’t talk to me, there’s never a large discussion about it in my family.
Do Not Feel Less Than, Because You Do Not Fit Expectations of What Someone Thinks You Should Be
When my stepmother died I went to be with my father and hugged and kissed him when he answered the door. When he had his open heart surgery I went to the hospital room to see him and he acted like I was a stranger. When my mother died he came to the funeral and cried and said, “She is just as beautiful as she ever was”, and did not ask how I was doing or hug me. When I had my open heart surgery last year, he did not contact me at all.
To be clear, I have stopped trying. There is no reason for me to feel “less than” just because I don’t fit into what he thinks I “should be”. This man, who was no saint, and spends all of our time on this earth judging his own child. The one he cried so openly about decades ago.
You Must Learn Grace, or There is Fear of Losing Your Mind
So here’s Fathers Day coming around. I view it through the prism of what was. My father WAS a loving and caring father. The values he taught me I still cherish, but my version of God and the universe is so much more loving than my fathers. Some in my family say I give my father a lot of grace for how he treats me. Well, when you are gay you learn about grace or you would lose your mind. I can love my father and not subject myself to his judgement.
On Father’s Day, I remember him from my childhood. I imagine THAT father still being here with me and what that would feel like. But I no longer subject myself to his cold and distant treatment of me just because he is my father. I will mourn the man I thought I knew and love him, and this old man that’s still here and wants nothing to do with me simply because of who I am, I will wish him the best. He has also lost out on a lot of love from me over the years. And I actually pity him for that instead of feeling anger towards him. On Father’s day, I remember that giant who held me in the air, with a smile and love in his eyes, and I secretly wish that man a happy Father’s Day.
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