Maternal Disapproval

Growing up, my mother never approved of my friends. When I was in grade 1, my teacher reported a classmate and I to our parents for being “too close” and holding hands, that we were being suspect for being gay. After the parents-teacher conference, this classmate, whom at the time I thought was my best friend, started distancing himself from me. 

When I was in grade 2, there was a father-and-son night. I dreaded it, not because I was afraid of my father, who has always been kind to my siblings and I but because of the conversation my mother had with my father and I about its importance.

I remember my mother saying, that because my father was a salesman and always away, I’ve only had female role models: her, my elder sister, my grandmother who lived with us, our household help, and my cousins who were all female. My lack of male role model turned me “soft” and “feminine”—but not gay. My mother was adamant in reminding me that I was not gay. I was just “refined.”

I felt bad for my father because it felt like my mother blamed him that I was “soft.” In another conversation, she revealed that they my guidance counselor in prep told them that when asked to draw my parents, I drew my father as a lion. She translated this to mean that I felt distant from my father vis-a-vie my mother who was a human woman.

Truth is I don’t remember doing this, but it does sound like something I would do. My father was a Leo. I never forgot his zodiac sign because he and his two brothers were all Leos, while my siblings and I were all Taureans. I thought this was uncanny.

Meanwhile, I must’ve drawn my mother as a human woman, not because I felt particularly closer with her—in fact, I feared her mostly during this time in my life, as she was the disciplinarian—but because I enjoyed drawing women more than men. My mother used curlers all the time and I enjoyed drawing her hair as fluffy clouds.

A week before father-and-son night, my mother borrowed this old tent from her brother, basically a cloth hoisted up by wooden poles. My mother went on and on about how important this time with my father is.

The father-and-son night went swimmingly because I successfully avoid my “soft” friends, so my father wouldn’t see them and report to my mother. He was “on our side” but my siblings and I knew he told everything to our mother so come to think of it, maybe he wasn’t completely on our side. He was just the good cop to my mother’s bad cop.

The worst moment came in grade 5 when I wanted to join the volleyball team, which is the sport most of the athletic gays joined. I remember being in my parents’ room with my mother vehemently and loudly disapproving of this decision. To be fair, it also didn’t make sense since I wasn’t athletic at all. Joining the art club would’ve made more sense.

You see, back in grade school, before joining an extra-curricular activity, you had to present a consent form with your parent’s signature. I had one friend she particularly didn’t like, because he was particularly flamboyant and he was actually gay.

“But he’s like an older brother to me,” I reasoned out when he asked me why I hung out with him, why he was my friend.

“You mean older sister?” she retorted.

I was quiet. I resisted her the best I could and I cried the whole night but I somehow, I won and got my signed consent form to join the volleyball team. 

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These memories surfaced while watching Disclosure on Netflix. There was this scene that showed parents of transgender kids coming together and Jen Richards shared how her own mother disapproved of her being trans, how she wasn’t even allowed to go to her grandmother’s wake if she doesn’t wear boys’ clothes.

She shared how her friends, too, weren’t accepting and as she learned about these parents of transgender kids, she wondered why her own family and friends couldn’t be as loving or accepting. And she realized that perhaps she was limited by her need for others’ validation that she forgot the importance of validating herself first and foremost.

I cried so much during this part because it reminded me of my own mother and how her approval to this day, continues to melt away the courage I build to come out to her and my father every time I’m near her. We’re in such better terms now and I fear destroying the calm of our relationship over the past few years. I also fear how coming out as gay would affect my father, whom my mother blame for my being “soft.”

Dear dad, you have no fault. Dear mom, you have no fault as well. I am gay not because of your influence—or lack there of—but just because I am. I am gay because I am gay. Dear god, please fill me with courage to finally come out.