A little over a year ago, the day before I came out as bisexual to the world, I came out as bisexual to my dad. I know, I was cutting it kind of close, but I had a feeling he already knew. Or he knew something. My mom had known for a year and hadn’t managed to keep a secret from him in over twenty-five. And it wasn’t like I’d asked her too. Still, I was anxious.
My dad is opinionated. My dad is an LDS Bishop. My dad is stubborn for the sake of stubbornness, and constant. But I couldn’t recall any homophobic behavior on his part, and he’d always liked my friends Caleb and Jeffrey. Really, I had no idea what his reaction was going to be.
“When I was young,” my dad said to me, and I knew that meant his early twenties because that’s as young as my dad ever is in his stories, “I got this real punk haircut.” He did not elaborate on “punk” any more than that. “And this one time one of my dad’s friends from the ward was over and he said to my dad, ‘Hey Jay, what do you think of Phil’s haircut?’”
I was laying in my bed, curled up on my side with my phone pressed to my ear. I felt tired, wired and already tears were starting to prick at my eyes.
“And my dad just looked at me,” he went on and I could hear the joy in his voice, “and smiled and said, ‘I love it, because he loves it.’
“You know that’s how I feel about you; how I feel about all you kids.”
He said more stuff that was all very supportive, but I can’t remember the exacts because I was crying too hard. Still, I got the gist - he loves me, and he loves the things that make me happy. He will love whoever I bring home to meet he and my mom, and he will love them without question. Because he loves me.
My dad is the tenth of twelve children and when he was around nine years old his family left him at a gas station for over an hour. The simply forgot him and kept on driving.
Personally, I think this explains everything wrong with him.
My dad doesn’t like to talk about his childhood. Or his adolescence. And his early twenties are talked about in the vague themes of rebellion, disillusionment, and aimlessness. The way my dad does talk you’d think his life didn’t even begin until he met my mom, and based on his Netflix and Wifi passwords you’d think nothing important ever happened to him before the day I was born.
So, all I have to go on when trying to psychoanalyze my father are the details his sisters let slip late nights at family parties and this short little story about the time my dad was left at a gas station. And I’m sure he prefers it that way.
But I can get a lot out of a little story, and it doesn’t take a genius to fill in the blanks. A childhood someone doesn’t like talking about isn’t often a happy one.
And yet, like Amy Pond said in that one episode of Doctor Who that I’ve never actually seen because I’ve never actually watched any Doctor Who, “All that pain and misery. And loneliness. And it just made [him] kind.”
I was named after my dad, actually. His middle name is Miles, and, obviously, my first name is Mylles, which even though it is spelled like it was dipped in acid, is pronounced the same.
It was my mom’s idea to name me Mylles and my dad hated it. She saw his driver’s license pretty early on in their courtship and said, “That would be such a cute name for a girl!” To which my dad said, “You’re crazy.”
It came down to a bet, which my dad lost, but his consolation prize came in getting to spell the name he so hated. After much pondering, counseling with friends and family, and burning dozens of children’s phonics workbooks, he settled of M-Y-L-L-E-S. And he learned to hate it less.
Didn’t keep me from hating it for the first eighteen years of my life.
“Mylles” led to a lot of nicknames, a lot of miscommunications, and I’m like ninety percent sure my sister Korana didn’t know how to spell it until she was twelve. But it’s grown on me. It’s my name and it means something to me. It means something about who I am.
The name “Miles” comes from the Latin for soldier, and I think this is fitting. I do not really have the makings of a modern soldier – I’m not obedient or incredibly disciplined – but the word miles was used to describe the medieval knight and the roman legionaries alike. A miles was devoted. A miles lived by a creed. A miles endured.
“Soldier on you resilient little shit.” That’s the motto I crafted for myself a few years ago – I even made a playlist – and that’s how I’ve seen myself. I can take a punch to the jaw, a kick to the gut, and a knife to the back and stand right back up. I keep marching, I keep fighting, and in spite of myself I keep believing that someday I’ll get all the things I want. And maybe that’s the root of it – maybe it’s spite and indignance that keeps me going. Maybe I spit the blood from my mouth and lift my head not out of a wholesome desire for happiness but a refusal to lose. Because I’m convinced I deserve better than the hand I’ve been dealt. I’m convinced that I’m better than the little I’ve amounted to.
And that’s my dad’s fault.
My dad is the kind of man who will text me out of the blue just to remind me he loves me. And it’s not just a single sentence, it’s a paragraph, waxing on about how he’s proud of me and so impressed with the woman I’ve become. My dad’s the kind of man who, after a talk was given at BYU a few months back that deeply wounded the LGBT community, including his daughter, used his authority as a Bishop to have a message of love and acceptance delivered from the pulpit of his home ward. My dad’s the kind of man who, without any prompting or fanfare sat down in his own free time and decided to watch She-Ra and the Princesses of Power the entire way through because he wanted to better understand his child. He’s the kind of man who then called me and listened as I rambled for over an hour on the phone about why it’s so important to me with an open heart.
He’s the kind of man who calls his wife his best friend and says stuff like “Or maybe we were just meant to be together,” when I joke about their astrological compatibility. He’s the kind of man who says “I’m never going to be able to deny her anything,” about his granddaughter, and tells me, “It’s a good thing we were poor when you kids were young or I would’ve spoiled you rotten.”
He’s the kind of man who says Hoobastank’s “The Reason” reminds him of my mom and cries every time he hears “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief”. He’s the kind of man who thinks it’s obvious that his son-in-law be included in the sibling family photo, and his future daughter-in-law in the family group chat.
He’s the kind of man who loves singing in the car, playing Catan, and watching movies with his family. He crochets blankets for his sister-in-law, replaces brake pads for his neighbors, and stocks up on Dr Pepper whenever I come to visit.
My dad’s full name is Phillip Miles Jeffery and the name “Phillip” means horse lover, which is just terrible. Especially since my dad hates horses. Or, actually, as he put it, “Hate is a strong word. They are big scary creatures who can sense my fear.” It comes from the Greek “philien” which means to love, and “hippos” which means horse. So basically “phil” – lover, “ip” – of horses.
Funny thing, I’m probably the only one who ever calls my dad “Phillip”. I only do it to disparage him, which it hardly does. When I started calling him by his first name when I turned eighteen he just gave me a sideways look and said “Okay kid.” Now that I know what “Phillip” means I might become more insufferable, but I will be alone in it.
My dad’s “Phil”. He answers the phone “This is Phil.” His coworkers will laugh and say, “Well that’s Phil for ya.” His brothers, sisters, parents, and friends, all say “Phil” in that same short, fond way when they talk about him, and they’re usually smiling.
I don’t know what your associations are with the name “Phil”, and mine are obviously colored, but to me “Phil’s” the funny guy. He’s the comic relief. He’s “of the future”.
But really, “Phil” means lover, and that’s what my dad is.
My dad will deny it, but he loves people, and he loves them a lot. To be my dad’s child, spouse, or friend is to be adored. It’s not always obvious, it’s not always loud, but it’s there and it’s earnest. It’s in the bags of Haribo Gummy Bears he buys just because he knows I love them, and the Dr Pepper he picks up for me early in the morning before we get to work on my car. It’s in the 24 hour drive he makes to see his brother-in-law after the death of his father, and the storage unit he pays for, for his adult children. It’s in everything he does.
“Phil” is not one of the names that was passed on to me, but I hope I can carry on its legacy. I want to love with the same fervor that my father does, I want to let myself adore. I know my dad is a soldier like me, it’s in the set of his brow and the way I know he swallows pain, but he is not quite so jaded. He tells me he loves me, and he doesn’t worry about whether I’ll say it back.
Or if he does, he says it anyway.
I want the strength to love like that.
Once, when I was a Junior in high school, I came home and berated my dad for spelling my name like he was on crack. My exact comparison.“The substitute teacher called me Millis!” I cried. “And then everyone else did! All day!”
My dad laughed, stirring something on the stove if I remember correctly, and then a mischievous grin lit up his face. “’He said his name,’” I recognized the quote immediately, a line from a family favorite film Flushed Away, and groaned at his horrible British accent, “’was Millicent Bystander.’”
And that was it. I was renamed.
I’ve been walking around as Millicent Bystander for almost nine years, but today I finally looked up the meaning of the name “Millicent”.
It means strength.
Names don’t have to mean anything, but I like to think they do, and I want to believe this one does. I want to believe I’m strong, or that I have the potential to be strong. I want to believe that strength will leak into everything I do. That I’ll be strong enough to bear my greatest burdens, to stand firm in my convictions, and to lift the hearts of others. I want to believe I’ll be strong enough to love like my father does.
Every name I have he gave to me, and I hope I bear them well.
