I love them. Lighthouses. My something grandfather was Keeper of the Lights around the Inner Hebrides and I didn’t know that until recently. I think of him and my something grandmother, living on Tiree, setting out with supplies and jokes, encouragement and connectivity, bringing food and light and weapons and seeds for the growing, books for the learning, candles for storm lights, patches for waterproofs, new wellies, whisky, tea, and more. In the days when people peopled the stone cylinders of hope and light, where all furniture had to have a rounded back, like old women, and the long days and nights felt like forever, the boat delivery was a glorious landing. In the between it was only us, only me, with my carrot seeds, my tangled beard, for it was a job for men, of course, being the stronger sex, the men who could cope with weeks of storm-blasted isolation, whereas women could never have managed such a thing. Women, who were never asked, might have loved such, and managed just fine had they ever had the chance. A personal trainer, less corsets, less parental control and muscle building excercises, would have proffered the actual chance to show how strong they could be, and which just might have upset the abacus, in a good way.

I hope I have been a lighthouse to my children, and not a boss. All I wanted was to be a light for their own chosen journeys. I want to save turtles on Zakynthos. Goodness! Ok. I want to go to a shaman centre in the Eastern Province of China. Goodness! Ok. I want to move to South Africa. Goodness! Ok. Just three of many. Other parents may have heard, I am gay, trans, I want to be known with another name. I want my baby, even if I am 15. I want to join the circus, I want to be a policeman, a trumpeter, a dancer, a market trader. I get the parental questions, of course I do. But, but, what about your degree in law, politics, medicine? We paid for it, it cost us! This was never our case, but I hear the disappointment. I honestly don’t think their dad, nor I ,ever felt that. This life is tough and tougher for the children of privilege. Expectations can stop easy breathing, so heavy, so limiting. I sincerely and fiercely believe that all those historical corsets have been burned on a bonfire, a red sunset preparing the dark for a sky-thrall, a gasp of freedom in that soft breeze.

To be a parent who really wants to be a lighthouse, who can say, when confounded by a stuttered revelation from a young thing, one who, and I quote, has no idea about life at all, is challenging. There will be sleepless nights and worrying days because we seem to think, wrongly, that we can control our children. Weren’t we children once, with dreams beyonding us from the corsetry of parents? Yes, we were. And what did we want? Acceptance, wisdom, help and a lighthouse.

Be a lighthouse.