As a parent, I spend a lot of time beating myself up for getting it wrong. Because I do get it wrong. We all get it wrong. I don’t have enough patience, I burn the toast, I forget the permission slip, I get exhausted refereeing the fights between a 7-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter and finally just end up yelling, “Stop it! Just stop it! Can’t you just stop it!?”
On the flip side, into every family come rare, occasional moments of grace. Moments when we do get it right. Exactly right. Usually out of dumb luck that of course isn’t dumb luck. Moments that come so naturally, so completely without thought or planning, borne solely of the overwhelming love that anchors parent to child.
These are the moments that count to our children. The ones that matter. The tiniest gestures that become turning points and define us to these creatures whose lives we’re charged with trying not to screw up too badly.
Like this handwritten note I found shared on my Facebook page this morning. A private note between father and son that serves as a template to us all: one dad, in one moment of one day, getting it very, very right.
Grace.
Nate,
I overheard your phone conversation with Mike last night about your plans to come out to me. The only thing I need you to plan is to bring home OJ and bread after class.
We are out, like you now.
I’ve known you were gay since you were six, I’ve loved you since you were born.
– Dad
Thanks to FCKH8 for sharing this note.
Outstanding.
Thank you so much for sharing this, William. Every single such shared moment of grace (as you so aptly put it) breathes such life into us all.
After she died, I found a similar such note from my mother– though more muted, and conveying her expectation of my heterosexual future as a caveat. But the love, in the moment, was there. What a different last five years we’d have had together had she shared it with me.