At my son’s daycare, even the infants get in on doing art projects. They have them make footprints on paper with nontoxic paint, and then someone (either a teacher or an older kid — I haven’t figured it out yet) turns it into a picture.

For example, a few weeks ago, his little red and orange footprints became lava shooting out of a volcano with “I lava you a lot Mama” written over it. Very cute, and of course I put it on the fridge immediately. Then I pulled the other piece of paper out from his bag. It was a footprint made into a football with “I love you dad to the endzone and back.” 

Now, as a queer woman, I’ve been fairly blessed for most of my life to have lived in affirming communities where me being LGBTQ is sort of like me wearing glasses — so common and part of the background that nobody really thinks about it that much, least of all me. I don’t normally feel like I stick out for being married to a woman.

But looking at that (admittedly very cute) artwork, I felt a drop in my stomach like I hadn’t felt since middle school. I realized that I really was different from the norm; that I don’t fit into most people’s general assumptions about the way the world works. I felt a moment of mom guilt that I’d passed on this difference, this perpetual sticking-out-ness to my son. For the rest of his childhood, any Father’s Day celebrations or projects at school are going to be an opportunity for him to feel like he doesn’t quite fit into the norm, because Sonny doesn’t have a dad. He has a mama and a mommy. 

Once again, as I so often do, I find myself wishing I could talk to my dad again. He passed away in 2017. That’s one thing my son and I have in common, I suppose — neither of us have a dad present in their life. 

Maybe someday he and I can bond over how Father’s Day is a little weird for both of us. 

Part of the reason that being queer was a non-issue in my family growing up was because my dad was raised by his mother and her lesbian partner on Deer Isle in the 1960s and 1970s. And if a family with two moms is still a little unusual in 2026, I can’t even begin to imagine how odd it was in 1966!

But of course, as a kid, you don’t appreciate these things about your parents. “Dad was raised by lesbians in rural Maine” was on par with “Mom grew up in Argyle, New York” in terms of boring, basic facts. When I first found out I was pregnant with a boy, I was concerned that he wouldn’t have a male role model in his home growing up — for all of about 12 seconds, when I remembered Dad hadn’t grown up with a guy in the house and he turned out to be one of the all-time greatest men to ever exist (in my completely unbiased, empirically unimpeachable opinion). 

I wish I’d asked him more about growing up with his moms. The stories Dad would tell about his childhood mostly revolved around getting into scrapes on the island — his boat floating away while he was clamming, getting his car stuck on a mudflat — or the menagerie of motley animals they adopted, including but not limited to a Christmas surprise donkey named Frankincense, a skunk named Nonesuch and a Corgi named Flopsy with a spinal injury who ran around with her back end tied to a skateboard.

I hope that when Sonny grows up that’s how he remembers his childhood — not particularly caring or remembering that his family was a little different, except for all the weird rescue animals. Because, let’s face it, the stereotypes about lesbians and rescue dogs and Subarus are there for a reason. (We are a two-mom and two-Subaru household.) 

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. And if it’s kind of a weird holiday for you — if you don’t have a dad, or you had a dad once and don’t anymore — well, you and Sonny and I are all in the same boat, I guess. I lava you a lot.