My Dad

-by Beau Burriola

"So there’s this guy I work with," Dad said. "He’s a real good-looking guy, unusually good-looking."

Whoa! I couldn’t figure out which was more bizarre: my Dad talking about a man being unusually good-looking (the same Dad that I didn’t speak with for six years over the whole gay thing) or what he could possibly follow that strange comment with.

"And he’s gay, but he’s not all girly, you know? He fixes up old cars and stuff and he’s rebuilding his home." I winced a bit, but listened on.

"Anyway, one day this other guy at work, a real jerk, started talking about how he didn’t like to work with the gay guy and you know what I said?"

I’d already heard the story from my sister just a few days earlier, but I listened on, still only half-believing it was true. "I told him I’d rather work with the gay guy than him any day."

If you told me a year ago that my Dad, a fire-breathing Texas preacher man, would say something like this, I’d have bet you a million dollars and a date with the bicycle repair shop guy that you were wrong. For six years, I was dead to my family and they were dead to me, painful holes in my life replaced with the “chosen” family I’ve created.

All I wanted was for him to admit he was wrong, that the entire hateful world I grew up in was a lie. Since we started talking again only recently, I’ve always hoped for just a simple apology. I felt like I deserved it.

"He’s not as good at speaking about heart things as you are," my sister reminded me a couple of days earlier. "He has his own way."

I was beginning to see what that way was.

"And I told him I have a great gay son," Dad continued, "and gave him your web site to check out. I told him I’d sure love to have him in our family and get my son back to Texas."

With those words, all these years of silence, of impassivity, of fear, of resentment, of anger, of confusion, of pain, of hate, of denial, of severance, all of it burst through the gates and went right under the bridge with my Dad trying to hook me up with some guy.

In his own subtle way, my Dad found the perfect solution to our problem: to outweigh a whole lifetime of negative and hateful words I didn’t think could ever be undone, he stacked up the weight of actions that speak far louder.

So, it isn’t the "I’m sorry" that I was hoping for. It isn’t the "I was wrong" that I demanded. It wasn’t the little checklist of things I thought I required to make amends. For everything it wasn’t, it was so much more.

The most painful decision I ever had to make was to choose between being happy and being a part of my family. I figured some families just can’t be fixed and resigned myself to living without. Now, close to a decade later, I’m learning that I didn’t have to choose one over the other. I only had to do what was right for me.

In his own subtle way, he made his apology; in my own not-so-subtle way, I’m accepting it. It’s been a long journey, but we finally made it.

"For time is the longest distance between two places." -- Tennessee Williams