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Father’s Day.
The Hallmark holiday that hits me the hardest.
Not simply because the children I parented don’t acknowledge me on this day, (our children literally owe us nothing…) but because, as I sit in the house he built with his own hands, the flood of memories of my own father are so bittersweet.
It’s likely useful to acknowledge that my father was born in late 1925.
His entire life, he read at only a first or second grade level -at best.
His own father preserved a pamphlet from the KKK with their anthem on the back of it, found in my grandfather’s trunk -tucked away in the basement here. (The juxtaposition of this pamphlet hidden away in the basement with the black dolls from her childhood my mother kept carefully wrapped in her hope chest… isn’t lost on me.)
My father was far less racist than his own father, for what that’s worth -but I’ll save that narrative for another day.
(Happy Juneteenth, y’all.)
My father was gifted and blessed with a gender expansive child in December of 1965, just days after his own 40th birthday. He accepted this gift in much the same way other men of his day did -with shame, denial, derision and ultimately, violence.
He was also a master carpenter.