My Rant for the Day

We all do things now and then that we wouldn’t share with our parents. Getting drunk with our friends in high school. Blowing off classes in college. Getting involved with a person who’s absolutely wrong for us. Losing our religion. Getting fired from a job because we deserve it. Leaving the kids with a sitter so we can do something totally self-indulgent.

There are things most of us take for granted that our parents will celebrate with us. Falling deeply and truly in love with The One. Getting married. Giving them a grandchild. Singing in a community choir. Accomplishing something wonderful in our professions. Having a loyal group of friends who love and respect us. Standing up for something we believe in. Getting recognized for service to our fellow human beings.

In the best of worlds, our parents endure us through our growing pains. Nurture us through our heartbreaks. Congratulate us on our accomplishments. Stand by us and stand up for us and let us be who we are, even if they don’t always understand who we are. Want the best for us and wish us happiness with what we determine makes us happy, even if that’s not what they envisioned for us when they looked down at us in our cradles, or sat in the audience at our school plays, or hoped for us when they watched us fly away from our nests.

It breaks my heart when truly decent parents and children are cheated out of really knowing and appreciating each other because of one thing: a child’s sexual orientation. Some parents are willing to maintain relationships with their gay and lesbian children “as long as we don’t talk about it.” Some will be tolerant privately, but “don’t tell the neighbors or the relatives.” Some will see their children alone, but “please don’t bring him (or her) home with you.”

I dare say very few of us talk about our sex lives with our parents. But we do talk about other things that are meaningful to us. And our parents usually take a certain pride in being able to tell their relatives and friends about the good things. Or they commiserate with other parents about the not-so-good things. Hidden lives deny everyone so much.

Like not talking about our lovely grandchildren of our lesbian daughter and her partner.

Like not telling the world that the kid with the cheap camera grew up to have his photographs celebrating love between men shown in a major gallery.

Like not turning to people in our church for comfort because our son has an awful disease that is slowly stealing him away from us.

Like not sending flowers or hugging your child or attending a funeral when her “roommate” of twenty years dies because of breast cancer.

Having to hide even the most commonplace features of our daily lives is nearly impossible. So we drift away. We don’t go home for holidays. We don’t call our parents. We don’t attend family reunions. We don’t keep in touch with the aunts or uncles or grandparents who adored us while we were growing up and are bewildered by our vanishing act. We aren’t there as proof to a young nephew or cousin that it’s okay. You can be happy. You can grow up and have a full life even if you’re “different.”

Our absence is supposed to make people comfortable. But is there really comfort for anyone in lies, secrets, evasions, and awkward silences? Parents—is it really more comfortable to guard every word you say, to conceal facts about your children’s lives, to answer with half-truths, to maintain deceptions, than to enjoy the liberation of saying, “This is how it is. Sorry if you can’t deal with it, but that’s my kid.”

That’s your KID. He doesn’t always do the right thing. She doesn’t always make the best choice. But he is worth knowing for who he is. She is worth loving through her bad times. He loves you. She needs you. You gave the world a beautiful, complicated, flawed, wonderful human being that you should get to know. You’d be amazed by how your child will touch you, amuse you, engage you, and impress you.