Angelica is a teenager that is about to embark on the most difficult conversation she has ever had with her family, the coming out conversation. She has known for as long as she can remember that she didn’t like boys but her Catholic upbringing also taught her that she was supposed to. Conflicted with who she was and who she was supposed to be she decided to keep her sexuality a secret only talking about it to her small group of LBGTQIA+ friends that she had at school. But after sharing how she had decided to come out with her friends, she also decided that now was the time. She was months away from graduating and she didn’t want to start her life in the military, which is also a part of her life that she has to share, without being honest. Her fear was not in telling her three older brothers or even her father, just in telling her mother who always expressed to her that being a wife to her husband and a mother to her children were two jobs she had to accomplish. In this moment she had to tell her mother that neither one of those that she wanted to do. After sharing with her brothers and father who were very accepting, she found the strength to tell her mother. Her fear was that her mother would disown her as some of her friends had said their parents said they would do if they, “ever had a gay kid.” But she took a deep breath, sat with her mom and told her deciding that being who she was meant to be was the best way to celebrate the woman that her parents had raised. A coming-of-age story that reminds us how very hard it is for teenager to find themselves, then when they do the challenge of sharing that discovery with the world.
My Day
Today is the day. As I stand here trying to figure out exactly how to make my shirts as crisp as my father could, that man could iron like nobody’s business. He could’ve started his own cleaners if you wanted to. Somehow, he was always able to get just the right amount of starch, just the right crease, his always popped. Every morning my dad would come down in his perfectly ironed shirt with a suit and tie and I would watch him, and my mom stand at the front door as the sun was rising and she would dust his shoulders off and tighten his tie just a little bit. They would smile at each other and give each other a kiss just before she handed him his lunch and waved at him as he walked down the steps full of joy and got into his car headed to work. The older I get the more I think about that memory and wonder if that was really my parents or if that was an episode of “Leave it to Beaver.” I joke and that story always makes me laugh but I promise you that is how I remember my parents. The perfect happy Hispanic Catholic family. My three brothers and I were raised that way. It wasn’t an option; it wasn’t a conversation it was just a part of who we were and a part of what we did. I was the only girl and my mother made it very clear, “I can’t wait for you to have babies.” I was raised with her saying that to me and with me believing that marrying a man and having babies was my job. Or at least that it was supposed to be a portion of my job. My mother never worked; it wasn’t so much that my father didn’t allow her to work but rather she was in a place where she could make a choice. She chose to stay home and be a fantastic mother and run the house and with four kids only a year between each of us. She was constantly busy and definitely earned her keep. That’s what makes today so hard, finally leaving to start my life. I’ve done a lot of terrible things to get here. I confided in my father, while I lied to my mother, and I had to tell her that I will never have babies.