Growth at any age

I'm proud of my dad, who didn't exactly express an emotion tonight but admitted to previously having had an uncomfortable one.

He was telling me about some event at my mom's church that featured music from Gavin and Ellen and Eva and maybe someone else, I can't remember...anyway, these are all people I remember from school because they're only a couple years younger than me. They are, as my dad pointed out, all from my brother's grade. "Why couldn't he be there to watch it too?" Dad said. I muttered rueful agreement and we all sat in the silence with that feeling for a little bit.

I'm proud of my mom too, who said "I never knew back then that Adam was gay." I didn't even know where to start with that. She reminded me that Adam is the same age as the kid she was a support worker for; she followed that kid all through from preschool to high school so she got to know all the students in that year pretty well; they were basically her coworkers every day for like 15 years. And one of them is this Adam.

I am dying to know how she's so sure now that Adam is gay but she didn't explain, just saying "It was so obvious." (Did he just say "my husband" or "my boyfriend"? Did he have a lisp and a limp wrist? What would be obvious as gay to my mom??) But she didn't report his gayness in a complainy way, much less like it's a tragedy, like she's telling me someone has inoperable cancer, so this is a vast improvement on the past. And she added "He was really nice, though," and reported on a nice ordinary conversation they'd had about his job. It's such a big deal for my mom to say a person can be gay yet also nice. And to have a normal conversation with them and report it as such.