What great fathers do

Letter #21

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Hey Dad.

Happy Father’s Day!

Here at Letters with my Father, this day feels like the Super Bowl. 

I wanted to send a letter to all the Fathers out there reading this article. 

THANK YOU! 

Thank you for being here for us. Thank you for not leaving. Thank you for the laughs, support, conversations, and memories shared with us.

I’ll share one of my favorite memories of my Dad today that shows the power and impact a great father can have.

A few years ago I went off to college in Florida for my first semester, which was a far cry from my humble hometown in Maryland. I was so excited to live within a 20-minute walk from the beach, and to say goodbye to winter forever.

My roommate and I hit it off pretty well. I remember connecting with him on Facebook before I arrived, and I think he was the one who initiated the initial friendship.

We became friends off the bat. 

A few days into our Orientation week, he came out to me. “Tom I didn’t know if you knew this yet, but I’m homosexual.” Those were his exact words. I’m ashamed to say this now, but I was kind of in shock afterwards. 

You have to understand that this was the first gay man I had ever really met before. This was 2011, before gay marriage was nationally legalized, and I grew up in a high school where exactly 0 people ever came out of the closet. 

This was my first experience with a gay person in general. 

I’m ashamed to say that after he told me, I became fearful. “Does he like me?” “Will he try to take advantage of me?” I started wondering these things in my heart of hearts. I just wasn’t sure, in part, because I just met him.

I got so scared that I told my Dad about it. “Dad, what do I do?” He then told me something that changed everything for me: 

“Well Tom, Sylvester Stallone and Elton John were best friends, I hear!”

You have to understand something about my Dad. He’s a big Rocky fan. We love Stallone in our house, and that was the way that he was able to access this difficult conversation and give me advice. 

It was incredible advice because it worked like a charm.

All the fear I had surrounding my new roommate disappeared instantly. His advice helped me humanize my roommate and made me think about gay people in general differently. They’re just like you and me. They’re not any different. They’re wonderful.

After my Dad’s advice, my roommate and I became inseparable. The memories we shared of spending cool nights on the beach with friends, getting into various shenanigans, and just talking with each other openly about our fears, dreams, and problems are ones I hold very dear to my heart.

My Father helped open up the world a bit more for me with one sentence. 

That’s the power a great Dad can wield.

At the end of that same semester, I said goodbye to my friend. I transferred to another college in Pennsylvania to go pursue my dream of wrestling in college. When my friend walked away after saying goodbye, I broke down into tears in front of my mother. I was an absolute wreck. My new friend and I made such great memories in 4 months that I remember them 13 years later with the same fondness in my heart. A part of me yearns to go back in time and spend just one more evening with him on the beach under the full moon drinking one or two beers that we purchased illegally (Sorry Dad!). 

Our relationship was truly one of the most special relationships I’ve ever had the privilege of experiencing. If there is a God, I imagine friendships–no, brotherhoods–like this are one of their most sacred creations.

And I experienced that because of my Dad.

My Dad also had a big impact on my friend. My roommate had a really bad history with jock types in high school. He says he used to be bullied heavily by the football players and athletes of his school, and if you saw a picture of me back in those days the first word that might pop into your mind is JOCK!

He was scared. He had some trauma. I don’t blame him at all. And this makes his courage to come out to me all the more amazing. He trusted me enough to put his heart out there and tell me something difficult. He always had my respect for that afterwards. And I was somehow able to help heal this wound in him that had been made by ignorant jock types in high school who probably had shitty Fathers. He told me as much years later. I’m so happy that he got some semblance of healing in the form of acceptance from someone like me.

What makes all of this even more of a miracle is the fact that my Dad is a Christian. That’s another group that inflicted massive trauma on my friend. He went off to conversion camp a few times which is designed to literally turn gay kids into straight kids.

My Dad was wise enough to understand that my roommate was a human being with many amazing qualities who deserved a chance. We so often hear from critics of Christianity that if Christians just acted more like Jesus, this world would be a much better place.

I’ll be hard-pressed to find a moment in my Dad’s life where he acted like Jesus more than the moment he told me, in no uncertain terms, to give this person a chance. 

I credit this one friendship as the point in my life that made me who I am today. That friendship helped me understand that just because we’re “different” doesn’t mean we’re all that different at our core. I gave value to groups of people I had overlooked all my life. My Father helped take the blinders off of my eyes so I could see the world in its entirety for the first time.

I learned that our differences are what makes this world so beautiful. 

I became friends with immigrants who taught me about their respective cultures. I lived in the Philippines for a few years because of some Filipino friends I made working at Disney World. It was easy for me to make the jump to live in Mexico despite knowing no Spanish because I already had friends here that I made at Disney. All this happened in part because my Father helped knock down the walls of ignorance in my mind years earlier. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I am who I am because of my Father. This statement is true for all of us, whether our Fathers were truly great or whether they let us down. 

We are who we are because of our Fathers. 

I hope that all Fathers out there reading this can internalize this. Understand the power you have. It is immense. It is the most important thing you will ever do–to raise a human being who will then go on to make an impact on the future of this world.

What a responsibility. But what an opportunity, too! To do your life’s best work. Your life’s most important work. I pray you don’t take it lightly.

And I pray my story can show you just how important you really are. 

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

I love you.