My son and his husband. It rolls off my tongue. Normalized matter-of-factly. Practically daring anyone to question or wonder. Sometimes I wait for that quizzical look; other times I make clear it’s not open for discussion. It’s easy.
It wasn’t always, though. What do you tell people when your kid is gay? To ‘out’ or not to ‘out’, even though he was technically out. That was the question I faced.
He told me at age 17, now 17 years ago, confirming a possibility, not a certainty. I told him to tell his father. If he didn’t, I would. He didn’t, so I did. Perhaps he wanted me to.
He never told me to keep it quiet, and at least one academic advisor encouraged him to tell, so I assumed his friends and classmates knew. But what about the rest of his world? Or really, mine.
Once he told me, I found myself confronting a question I hadn’t anticipated: who, if anyone, was I supposed to tell? And who got to decide?
This was 2009. Marriage equality was still years away. I knew where I stood on that. What I didn’t know was how to navigate the social terrain when it became personal. He went to prom with girls. He played the love interest in plays opposite girls.
Friends would talk about who their kids were dating, the dramas that spilled into their homes, whether teenage couples should be allowed to share bedrooms, and even the inevitable gossip about the other parents. My son wasn’t bringing anyone home, so I had little to contribute other than questions and occasional advice.
I wasn’t volunteering anything either. Each conversation seemed to present the same quiet calculation: was this my story to tell, or his?
You don’t announce that they’re straight. I never understood why I was expected to announce that he was gay.
But apparently I was. Years later, when I mentioned he was getting married to his husband, people — straight and gay — who had known him and me for years looked surprised. What was I supposed to have told them, exactly? And when?
I had consulted experts. Child therapists and the gay men I knew. The consensus: It was not my place to tell the world.
But what about family? People close to us. He wasn’t hiding anything. Some, he wanted to tell himself. Waiting for the right moment. No matter how long it took. That wasn’t mine to take.
Until I did. Accidentally on purpose. The timing never seemed right to tell his two grandmothers. One day, in the car with my mother, she was pressing me about his female love interests. After several attempts to change the subject, I blurted out, “Mom, he’s gay.” She was stunned. And accepting. I think he was relieved. Even now, I’m not entirely sure I was right to tell her.
My son made a point of bringing his future husband to meet his other grandmother. We learned at her funeral that she’d been welcoming to the gay men in her community her whole life, long before it was ever personal.
The wedding was pure joy. By then, there was nothing left to explain.
But I had learned that earlier.
When he left for college, he sent me an email. I printed it and tucked it into my wallet, where it has remained for more than 15 years. Acknowledging that he didn’t always make things easy for us, he wrote, “I was able to come into who I was without the judgment of my home and parents.”
