By Gwendolyn Ann Smith
In the summer of 1939, my father was born. He was a farm boy from a time when the suburbs of California actually had farms. At an early age, his father left, leaving him to become the patriarch of the family before his first chin hair.
In the late 1950s, while they were both still in high school, my father met my mother. They wed in 1960, spending their honeymoon around San Francisco's North Beach. They ended up catching the "female impersonator show" at Finocchio's.
Seven years later, I was born. My father, a long time fan of trains, has his "Little Engineer." He named me after a friend of his who died in a cement mixer accident. Twenty-seven years after it was put on my birth certificate, I changed that name to the one I have now.
Throughout my childhood, there were plenty of clues to my future. For example, my attempts to get stereotypical girls' toys, or the times my parents cleaned my room for me, revealing a cache or two of clothing more appropriate to a gender different from the one they were raising me in.
I learned, much later, that many in my family assumed I was gay for years, though the euphemism applied at the time was that I was a "sensitive child."
One night, my dad took me with him to scout a church out that he would be photographing a wedding at the next day. This wasn't something he usually did, and I could guess this was a subterfuge. He wanted to talk to me about some clothing they'd discovered concealed in my room.
"Your mother and I discovered something in your room," he began, sucking the air out of the cabin of the family's 1979 Buick. "I don't know why you have these. I don't want to know. You can have these back, and it is up to you to either get rid of this, or keep it. But I don't want to hear any more about it."
So he did not hear another word — for about a decade. I remained deeply in the closet, including to myself, until I met my spouse.
The day I came out to my parents was not an easy one. The four of us — mom and dad, my partner and I — sat in the living room of the house they shared at that time. In the back of my mind, dad's words still reverberate to this day.
"I half through you were going to tell me you had an incurable disease and were going to die," he said, trying to hold back tears, "and in some ways that might have been easier."
We did not talk a lot in the next decade. I was not allowed to come by the house, and communication was limited to the occasional email or phone call. Eventually I further cut off contact until my parents finally relented, allowing me to talk to my sister and others in our family.
During that time, my dad had changed as well. Dad was now attending church on a regular basis. His political beliefs — always on the Republican end of the spectrum — became further to the right.
He also divorced my mother and started to live with another woman, and with another family.
A handful of years ago, a change happened. He had a customer come through his workplace — Disneyland — who knew me. My father told him how proud he was of the things I'd done — and me. My dad also told me the same, acknowledging the name I had taken for myself for the first time.
Not long after that, he had his first bout with bladder cancer. This turned into a second bout, and a third.
He and I recently talked, in between the treks to treatments and such. It's been so many trips to hospitals that it's all a bit of a blur now. He talked a lot about his faith, but he also discussed those times in the 1980s when he was attending a church in West Hollywood. He was pressed into attending by a former employee of his, who had recently begun serving at that church.
His other friends — just as conservative as him — told him to avoid the place and to certainly not touch anyone there. This was the earlier days of the AIDS epidemic. He refused, and reached out, providing a bit of support to those who may have been gone in weeks or days.
He finished his story with a simple statement. "Love is love," he said.
Just says ago, I spoke with the woman he lives with now. She called with an update on my dad's health. The cancer that he has fought for so long was on the move again. Not content to take his bladder from him, it has now spread into his liver, and spots have been discovered on his lungs. I'm really unsure of what lies ahead for him, but to say the prognosis is bad is to vastly understate things. Father's Day is soon, and I hope he will see this one.
In the far end of the 1990s, when he and I were first reconciling, he told me how much of a failure he felt he was for raising a transgender child. I told him that, no, he was no failure. He raised me to understand who I was, and to be strong in the face of the adversity I might face. He gave me what I needed to survive.
Happy Father's Day, dad: thank you for making me who I am.
