“It’s okay to hav a Baba,” (sic) from the girlchild, Kindergarten year (2010).

The sun still hasn’t set on Baba’s Day this year, and I can’t pause long, but do want to leave a little something here for the occasion, in solidarity with any other comrade who happens by. The only way it’ll happen is with bullet points and incomplete sentences, so! Herewith:

• •  Talked at length to my Pops this morning about fatherhood, lesbian and otherwise. His loving support and openness to my whole self has a value beyond words.  It is anointing, validating, liberating, inspirational. He essentially gets it, which is about as much as you want from anyone, especially a family member, particularly a parent.




• •  There’s much to say about our conversation, but not on the fly on the day itself. In short, we concur: when you disengage the clutch and allow your gears to coast unhindered by the space stamped out for them (allotted movement, only here and only in this way), all sorts of stuff that might otherwise bamboozle begins to make sense: masculine femininity, feminine masculinity, the fact that each of us who fights for more space for ourselves, who elbows more elbow room for a fuller, truer self, makes more space for others.




• •  We have more allies in this process than we know. Specifically, women trying to make space for parenthoods like mine have allies in gay men fathers and straight men fathers who themselves want company as they, too, expand the notions of what’s possible.  I think my father appreciates my parental/gender journey because he’s just such a man. Either one (gay man father or straight). He’s 90 already, so if I don’t know now, I’ll probably never know which. His favorite answer to questions he can’t quite hear: “Probably.”




• • Before I return to my day, here are some ditties from years past of topical interest:




• • Things I have in common with dads, from 2006,
  • A Baba’s Day Proclamation, from 2007, and
  • A Baba’s Day pictorial, from 2009

Happy day, to one and all.