Great piece, not what I expected. When I read the title, I thought it was going to be about a father who, because of mental illness or some other deep problem, walked out on his family and became homeless.

I’m happy for you that you turned the situation into a source of strength.

My father threatened to withdraw support when I changed my major from music to early childhood education, but relented when I stood my ground. Oddly, he never threatened such when we fought about the Vietnam War, which he supported while I attended protest rallies, my brother contracted chronic bronchitis (which destroyed his health and nearly killed him last year) from exposure to Agent Orange at an airfield in Thailand, and my best friend’s brother died somehow, somewhere over there.

I guess he was a pretty good model, because I had as a base assumption that parental love is unconditional. While I wasn’t crazy about every decision my own children made, but I didn’t withdraw support, nor ever threaten to. Now they don’t need my support. As a side note, when our daughter came out to us, we were like, “Oh. We knew that.” Later I apologized for the anticlimax — I’d failed to provide her with a good story.