I can clearly remember
the moment I realized my daddy wasn’t perfect.
We were in the kitchen,
and it was dark outside.
He said of course gay people should be allowed
to see their loved ones in the hospital and such,
but he wasn’t sure they should be allowed to get married.
It was disorienting in ways I can’t begin to describe.
You just expect things, think there are
things in life that are certain,
and then your dad isn’t sure gay people should be allowed to get married.
There is not a measurement
to explain how much my dad loves me,
It is without bounds.
I know that.
Of that, I am still certain.
But I’ll always have that memory of incomprehension,
when he separated people into an “us”
and a “them”
and I think maybe I was supposed to be in the them column.
We haven’t really talked about it since,
because if he still feels the same,
I’m not sure I can handle knowing that.
To this day,
that’s the only part of him that I’d change.