Valerie Kameya

I was raised to believe that good people grew up, dated, got married and had kids if they could. That’s just the way it was. Family was important, and how would you keep the family going if you didn’t get married? Single people were sad cases- for some reason, they couldn’t find a mate. Bad timing, too high standards, or maybe they weren’t easy to get along with or didn’t “try hard enough” to find someone. If you married, well, you stayed married unless your husband was horrible to you. If you divorced or were widowed, it wasn’t likely you’d get married again very soon.

Gay? My grandpa and parents would talk about the “mahus” they saw, like Richard Simmons, or those they knew in the community. At school in LA, there were always rumors about this boy in elementary school and junior high, and that girl on the softball team and those theatre guys in high school. In the family, there were rumors about this aunt or that uncle who died young. But nothing that was ever admitted publicly. Until I came along and kind of forced my parents out of the closet, not very compassionately…

—-

The first time I heard the LGB combo (lesbian/gay/bisexual)  was at college. (In 1988 there was not much talk of transgender folks.) The weekly LGB group was the place I was afraid to go.

Grinnell College was an extremely liberal liberal-arts college in Iowa. I was so paranoid that I imagined the few anti-gay folks on campus would be spending their Thursday evening hiding in the bushes, taking flash pictures of all who entered around the meeting time.

My friend R said “Don’t be silly, Valerie. Don’t you think people have better things to do than to lurk in the bushes snapping pictures of the possibly gay?”

——-

The hard part was summoning the courage to deal with my mom and dad’s reactions to the news. I did not deal with it for years, preferring to brush it off as “their problem” and not emotionally taking in how difficult it was for them to rebuild their dreams for me, and how their deep and strong love made them work to break down their homophobia. I wasn’t emotionally present to the maelstrom of confusion and isolation they experienced. I deflected the guilt I felt at being the cause of their grief and disappointment.

I was just so relieved to stop hiding and break out of my cocoon. I didn’t appreciate how my mom and dad went into hiding from family, friends and the community until they could truly claim with pride that they were the proud Asian parents of a gay kid. The alchemy of a parent’s love transformed their fear and grief into pride and acceptance. That is a true miracle.