When I talked to my dad about my queerness, I wish he told me how much we had in common

This First Person is the experience of Jenn Chen, who lives in Toronto. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ. 

In retrospect, it’s a little embarrassing how many signs we missed about my father’s hidden identity.

There was Christmas of 2022, when I converted all of our home videos from tape to digital files for my parents as a present. We watched them together on the living room television — days at the park, bathtime misadventures, a riveting class dance by myself as a toddler — and then an unceremonious cut to footage of the 2004 pride parade in Toronto. 

Dad sat stony faced as mom made comments about how many cultural events they went to when they first moved to Canada from China, so many she didn’t even remember that one. I figured he went just for the sake of novelty, and was too embarrassed to say as much. I did not think of it further.

LISTEN | Jenn Chen shares what happened when she discovered her father’s hidden love letters:

Now or Never17:03After my dad died, I found his hidden love letters

A few days after Jenn Chen’s father suddenly died, she found letters tucked away in a box at the back of his closet. They were love letters, written to her father by men. It led Jenn to a series of discoveries that are changing her perception of the traditionalist, often distant man she feels she barely got to know.

Earlier that year, I had come out to my mom, but not him. We all knew my dad to be a traditionalist, and so it seemed obvious that he would react poorly to the news.

But I loved my Dad, and I was tired of hiding from him. So a few years later, one afternoon when the vibe was good, I told him on a whim. I told him that I liked girls, somewhat exclusively. I told him that I am single not because I’m uninterested in dating, but because it’s hard to meet new girls in a small city. (I lived in Waterloo, Ont., at the time.)

He was quiet for a bit, taking it in.

Then he asked if other people in the family knew. I told him yes, trying not to feel bad about it. They’ve known for a while.

“OK,” he responded. “That’s fine. Baba will support you no matter how you want to live your life.”

Chen says she found the family’s footage of the 2004 Toronto pride parade while converting old home videos a few years ago. She says her dad filmed the parade shortly after moving to Canada from China. (Submitted by Jenn Chen)

This was the other egregious sign I missed: this gift of acceptance that I had no reason to expect. I was so overjoyed by it it didn’t occur to me to feel confused by the gap between my family’s expectations and reality. Instead I took the afternoon to catch him up on what he missed, all in a rush: my last relationship and the way it went to pieces, the kind of women I like, my plans for the future. 

I remember feeling so floatily happy about how lucky I am that both of my parents would attend the wedding after I met the right girl. I felt a burst of gratitude towards the universe.

But Dad was still who he was: a distant, traditional patriarch, and I had long since moved far from home, and so we didn’t have many opportunities to speak of it further.

The next time we talked about it was when I had come home for Christmas in 2024. I had announced my intention to donate my eggs, and he was worried about health complications. Dad came into my room to talk. He asked me if I was only donating eggs because I couldn’t see any way to have my own kids.

I tried to convey in my broken Mandarin that it was because it’s important for me to help others, but I could tell that he was not entirely convinced. My parents didn’t raise me to help others; they found it strange even though they are pleased by it too.

“Alright,” he said. “You’re my daughter, and I care for you and your well-being a lot. I know I didn’t do as much research as you and I’m sure the internet has lots of studies that say that the procedure has a 99 per cent success rate. I just worry that you end up the one per cent.”

“I know,” I said. I wanted to say more, but I didn’t have the words, not in his language.

He looked at me for a moment, searching my face.

“It’s important to find xìngfú (幸福) in life,” he said, somewhat abruptly. It means a contented and harmonious life, lived well and with joy all the way through. 

“Nothing else matters. Whether that means you end up with a boy or a girl, you know baba will support you. Having kids isn’t as important as having xìngfú. And if you decide to have kids eventually, remember that it’s hard to give them a childhood with xìngfú if you don’t have that yourself.”

I knew how little of it he had in his childhood and in his own life. I wanted to tell him that he’s at least done a good job in my own childhood, but I’m not sure he did, so I stayed silent. 

But I pulled him into a hug, and we squeezed each other tight. 

That was a new thing for us; he wasn’t really the physically affectionate type. But recently I’ve been trying to slowly introduce my parents to a more western way of being.

He left hastily after the hug, turning his face away so I couldn’t see it.

Chen says her father was a traditionalist and often distant man. (Submitted by Jenn Chen)

I thought we would have the rest of our lives to talk. At the pace of one or two big conversations a year, maybe we’d get somewhere by the time I turned 40. I didn’t expect him to pass suddenly last August, from his first heart attack, barely a year after I came out to him.

In the aftermath, going through his things, we found the love letters and the emails to the man he was seeing seriously and was house shopping with. We found missives to all the other people he saw behind that sweet man’s back. And we discovered all the mistrust and dislike he’d deliberately sown between his family and my mother so they couldn’t co-ordinate to piece the puzzle together about his hidden life. 

It’s difficult for me to imagine the kind of shame and pain that he must have lived with for him to choose to live this way. All those layers of deception and betrayal. It’s difficult for me to imagine, because I did not come of age and into my queerness in a regressive society with strict gender roles, right as AIDS was sweeping through my community.

It’s difficult for me to imagine it, and I have him to partially thank for that: the choice he made to move the family to Canada when I was very small. (I think he did it for his own sake, to escape regressive Chinese norms and to find belonging with others like him, but I reaped the benefits too).

He looked at me differently after I came out to him. He would search my face, his own a mix of tenderness and hunger. I could feel in his gaze how proud he was of me. I thought it was just because he was proud of me, of the life I built here, of my career success and the way I have friends the world over and my self-assuredness in pursuing the life I want. 

I wish I had known that there were more things that he wanted to say. I have so many questions to ask him. I would have really loved to talk.

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