Pretty Brave

Dad

There are many fun facts about my Dad. He's a third-generation Erieite turned yinzer-turned Austinite. He's an appraiser of Kurt Vonnegut and has a shelf in our family garage filled with Buddhist bric-a-brac. He prefers the disco and glitzy "Let's Dance" era of David Bowie despite present sensibilities and has a soft spot for Janis Joplin.

However, despite his eccentricities, the most intriguing thing about my Dad is that he chose bravery.

Born in an insulated suburb in an insulated city, his childhood was the remnant of a flailing American Dream. He lived in the house his grandfather built fifty years before his birth, abreast of neighbors whose grandfathers lent my forefathers the brick and paste for said house. He spent his afternoons on the lake, aimlessly driving around town with his high school buddies, and eventually became the school ceremonial head as football team captain.

Despite this dreamy image conjured up by a supposedly "simpler" time, my father grew up in a period marked by political upheaval. Through analog TV, my father witnessed the waging of a callous political program: the neglect of the AIDS crisis, the onset of racialized police violence, and the compression of the middle class through the artifice of trickle-down economics. In a low-income family sheltered by white privilege and being generally offset from an urban setting, all arrows pointed to my father having a bigoted worldview.

But he didn't because he was brave. He was brave enough to see past the city limits of Erie, not squander in fear of the supposed urbanite homosexuals and rioters, or jeopardize his masculinity in the voting booth. He did the bravest thing of all—lived kindly and openly.

I love you, Dad.