If Mother’s Day is nine months after Father’s Day, when is Children’s Day?

In the community and church where I grew up, Children’s Day was always celebrated in early June. I remember it well because my aunt was the Primary Sunday school Superintendent and conscripted me to go with her on the Saturday morning preceding Children’s Day to strip field and forest of wild daisies which bloom in early June. She used them to decorate the impromptu stage erected at the front of the church.

There, to the delight of adoring parents, the children of the Sunday School, individually and in groups, would tug at their trousers (and occasionally wet them), twist their tresses, and hopefully blurt out their memorized lines—recitations of great import and religious significance, such as:

My name is Daisy-Mae / Thank the Lord I’m not lily.

Thank the Lord I’m just a daisy / With a pert pug nose.

Or something like that.

Most of my professional career was in the field of child health and development and so I read with particular interest the June 12, 2000 issue of New York magazine devoted to parenting. The issue was titled “The Wired Family” and in among the other gems was an article on gay dads. It was a delightful interview with two gay dads—one in New York City and the other in Washington state. Both are parents by adoption. Both are in long term committed relationships. They describe with humor their experience as gay couples parenting a two year old for the New York couple and a six and a four year old for the Washington couple, all boys.

The hardest part, they say, is getting on airplanes. A child with two men at the ticket counter precipitates a police call on the assumption that a kidnapping is in process. Now both sets of parents carry birth certificates and adoption papers with them when they travel. And, in response to the frequently asked question of, “Where’s Mommy?”, one father answers honestly, “Mommy’s in New Orleans living on the streets, begging for change. That’s what Mommy does and likes to do.”

As to the question of raising a son without a female figure in the home, one Dad said, “People assume that two gay men raising a baby are raising it in a bath house, or on an RSVP cruise in some all male environment. And you know, the truth is, he’s going to have female teachers. He has a female pediatrician. He has an aunt. He has two grandmas. He has so many women in his life he’s not going to want for them. But he’s lucky, he has two parents, you know...parenting is about being competent and responsible. It’s not about gender, necessarily.”

And on the question of whether the parents preferred their sons to grow up straight or gay, one father summarized his feelings as, “...the likelihood of our boys being gay is the same as it would be for anyone else’s boys: 4% 10% Not very much. ...and assuming they will be straight boys, we hope in some way that they will be a different kind of straight boy than the kind I grew up terrified of. Maybe they’ll be very sensitive. They’ll certainly know that men cook and do all the housework—to the extent that anyone does. If they do end up straight, they’ll be a real catch.”

Certainly children are one of the many treasures of Rehoboth Beach. I can think of no faster cure for headache or depression than five minutes on a boardwalk bench watching kids chase waves, dig a hole to China, feed the gulls, or untangle cotton candy from their hair. I may be a minority within a minority but I for one delight in seeing children on Poodle or North Beach with their parents, Big Brothers, significant others, or whomever. Their natural beauty and innocence contrast dramatically with the rest of the scenery.

Not too many years ago political and emotional battles flared in Rehoboth to keep Rehoboth Beach a “family town.” It’s a sentiment that I embrace completely, as long as the definition of “family” is inclusive, not exclusive. Defining the family as a heterosexual married couple who have utilized the missionary position to produce 2.8 children and who have a dog, a canary, and a station wagon, plus a mom who’s home 24 hours a day smiling and making brownies, excludes the Holy Family as well as the myriad of us mere mortals who relate in non-traditional ways. A family is defined by love and support and commitment, not by external appearances.

The world of Ozzie and Harriet no longer exists, but what has replaced it in Rehoboth Beach is far better. When my partner and I first bought a condo in Rehoboth almost a decade ago, my oldest son and his family visited one August weekend. Walking down the boardwalk on a misty Saturday morning David said, “Dad, I don’t understand it. We read about Rehoboth Beach in Family Circle magazine as America’s premier family resort. Yet you and Howard are always characterizing it as an East Coast gay Mecca.” “Dave,” I replied, “The amazing thing is that both statements are true: I can take you to Poodle Beach and you will see a thousand of the most beautiful men you have ever seen; and, all you have to do is sit here along the boardwalk in the evening and you’ll see more baby carriages, toddlers and teens than you want to see. Both are true.”

I hope that’s the legacy Rehoboth will have for my children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews and all who flock here throughout the year—a family town, America’s premier family resort, with family defined by love and support and commitment—a family town with room for all.

A glimpse of that future is captured in a lullaby written by Fred Small at the request of Janet Peterson of Motherlode. Janet’s eight year old son came home from school one day and said, “Mom, it’s getting hard to grow up and be a man these days; you can’t hug your friends anymore. You have to slug ‘em and say ‘son of a bitch’.” Janet perceptively thought he needed a different message and “Everything Possible,” Fred Small’s lullaby, was the answer. The Flirtations, a gay male a cappella group, used this lullaby as a signature song and I never heard it without a choke, a swallow, and a dab at moist eyes. It’s a wish for Children’s Day in Rehoboth and beyond. Listen...

We have cleared off the table, the leftovers saved,

Washed the dishes and put them away.

I have told you a story and tucked you in tight

at the end of your knock-about day.

As the moon sets its sail to carry you to sleep

Over the midnight sea,

I will sing you a song no one sang to me—

May it keep you good company.

You can be anybody that you want to be.

You can love whomever you will.

You can travel any country where your heart leads

And know I will love you still.

You can live by yourself, you can gather friends around,

You can choose one special one.

And the only measure of your words and your deeds

Will be the love you leave behind when you’re gone.

Some girls grow up strong and bold,

Some boys are quiet and shy.

Some race on ahead, some follow behind,

Some grow in their own space and time.

Some women love women and some men love men.

Some raise children and some never do.

You can dream of the day never reaching the end

Of everything possible for you.

You can be anybody that you want to be.

You can love whomever you will.

You can travel any country where your heart leads

And know I will love you still.

You can live by yourself, you can gather friends around,

You can choose one special one.

And the only measure of your words and your deeds

Will be the love you leave behind when you’re gone.

© Fred Small