“My son will never be hungry,” the Fish Lady told me after we discussed the price of haddock. “I will always have a variety of things to eat in the house for him.”
“How old is your son?” I asked.
“He’s 11, and I’m making sure his life is very different from mine. When I was his age, my younger brother and I were always hungry. There was never anything to eat in the house. My mom spent what money we had on drugs. I used to have to track her down in these empty buildings where she was doing her drugs. I’d say, ‘Mom, we’re hungry.’ But that didn’t make a bit of difference. She didn’t hear me.”
I’ve met many people who tell such stories, and I feel embarrassed each time I hear them. I thanked the Fish Lady for telling me her story and gave her a huge hug.
“Oh, I needed that hug today.”
I grew up with many advantages of which I was completely unaware. None of my neighborhood friends knew that children our age in our city went to bed without dinner. The nuns never mentioned it, nor the priest from the pulpit. In school, we collected money for the “poor, starving children in China.” Our parents warned us about dangerous neighborhoods in Flint, MI, but they never said that many of the children who lived there were starving.
I know nothing about the lives of Palestinian children, or those in Iran. But I do know that I was spoiled with lunches packed by my mother. I was taken to doctors and dentists. Do the impoverished children in Appalachia see dentists? Do any of these children have their own beds?
I would never try to compare my hunger for safety and acceptance. But, I could have told the Fish Lady about children living in disabling fear their whole childhood. I had lots to eat and wear but I lived alone in my scary closet. It’s a privilege to be a straight child, adolescent, and teenager. And they have no idea what it’s like to be a gay child.
Because of all the incredible work we’ve done, including coming out as LGBTQ to our parents, the lives of most gay children, hungry or not, have changed for the better. Being gay today is less scary than it was for me. It’s easier not to be hungry for affection. In fact, being gay is more likely to have a positive influence on one’s life than not. I can’t speak to the lives of gay children in Uganda, Iran, and Palestine. In most of Western civilization, parents are more aware of the possibility their child might be gay, and less likely to starve them of acceptance and affection. It’s less likely that we need to say, “Mom, I’m hungry for your love.”
It’s only through telling our stories that we learn of the challenges of others and they learn of the challenges we faced.
