I would be remiss if I acknowledged Mother’s Day and not Father’s Day. Unfortunately, unlike Mother’s Day I don’t have a Father’s Day poem to highlight the beautifully complicated relationship one has with their father. Which got me to wondering, why is it that I don’t? My father was their for all my milestones, angst, and general life stuff that happens when growing up. He kissed boo boos, helped build forts, and made fish sticks that were just crispy enough. My love of sci-fi and those things strange and peculiar are a directive product of his influence. I think the greatest contribution he has given me is having not put me in a box or isolate me on a pedestal because I am his female child, with words and actions that discount my ability to think and reason or control and stifle my sexuality because I was born with a vagina. 

With his most famous words of wisdom, “She’s going to do what she wants. I know I raised her right and I want to always be there in her life.” I leave you with no poem for the Father’s today just a great deal of appreciation for those Dads like mine that let us be who we are meant to be because they know they had a big part in shaping us.

Happy Father’s Day!

Janet