The trees outside the window of my childhood bedroom flutter in the summer breeze. The final summer in this room, in my childhood. This is the end of my innocence, my naivety. Waking up to weekend breakfasts that waft up into my bedroom as they lull me awake is a thing of the past. I follow the trail to the kitchen and living room, where my family rests with plates in their laps, the dogs begging for a bite. It’s never an issue if the TV is on as conversation bursts through my family, not always polite but forever honest. Truths drip from my father’s tongue as honey from a hive, whether it be the weather outside or the rising unease in our hearts. His words are not always eloquent, yet they always offer solace.
This is the childhood that taught me the importance of opinion, even if it expels you from a space. This is the way that I choose to step forward through life, for I would never wish to sit in a room of conversation that skirts around the edge of uncomfortability rather than honesty flowing freely. For the remainder of my life, I pledge to follow in my parents’ footsteps… declaring an opinion despite the reaction I may receive. I wish to speak on politics and ethics as openly as we discuss the weather, for politics are no longer a matter of opinion. They are a matter of humanity.
I refuse to refute my beliefs that follow what I was taught to stand for: a country that fights for freedom and justice for all, not for the few who can afford it. I want the country that my grandfather emigrated to: one that provides for its citizens and those who are not. He never chose to fight to be a citizen, even after living here for over five decades, for it was enough. He had the rights and respect expected from simply being human, despite being declared an alien.
My grandfather is a pastor. He lives a humble life in a tiny town on the farthest edge of the Upper Peninsula. If you stand on his roof, you can see Wisconsin, or if you walk a bridge in his town, you might stand in two states unknowingly. There is no place on the border of our country that is as free as that, as accepting as he is. There is barbed wire, shock fences, and armed guards to the north and south. He never questioned or lectured me when he learned I was queer, when I changed my name, or when I asked if any of that was okay in his eyes. He never closed his heart to me; he remained the man I knew him to be.
This is not the case for all queer people or all immigrants; many are shut out or turned away at the very idea of their identity. There is a sense of humanity in acceptance that has been lost to decades of debates and votes. The idea that one’s identity is a matter to be voted upon is one of the most inhumane things imaginable. To lay open the crux of one’s identity on a mount for the world to see, slicing it apart and demanding that pieces be moved or changed is simply… inhumane.
There is a lost art in humanity, in choosing to see the humanness of the person standing before you above all else.
