Common pronoun usage dictates male pronouns when speaking about a father, but mine is an uncommon situation. The correct pronoun is "she". My father is a male-to-female transsexual. Many have difficulty conceptualizing this tall, blonde, funny woman as a father, and most suggest that fatherhood is impossible in such a situation.

Generally, people insist that a woman cannot be a father, and yet, she is my father. The bond we share is as normal as any other father-son relationship. We toss the football and practice lacrosse. We watch TV and laugh wildly. We discuss homework and grade her students' papers. Sometimes we argue, because obstinacy certainly runs in the family. We have a relationship that society deems impossible, but to us, is quite mundane.

My mother and father separated when I was at the tender age of six. The urban life I had known in the city was wrenched from my grasp as my mother and I moved to the spacious suburbs. Leaving my father behind tore a hole in my heart her exact shape and size.

Even though we were far removed from each other, my relationship with her remained strong. Every other weekend, she would come to seal the great fissure of my soul, only to leave the day after and re-open it.

We both underwent changes in our time apart; I sprouted into adolescence while she transformed into a woman. Each time I saw her she had transformed more and more into a woman. By the time I was ten years old, and began to understand the world, my father was comfortably a woman, and I was comfortable with her as a woman.

My relationship with my father has molded me to who I am today. The lessons I draw from my father include those about gender, but largely influence my life in ways only a father can. I learned tolerance, patience, and acceptance from my father's transformation but more importantly she instilled in me a fundamental tolerance for the unknown as well as vigorous passion to find that which I love, not that which provides momentary satisfaction.

Some deem my father impossible, some mark our relationship as disgraceful; all I know is that she is the best father that I have ever had, and that is all that matters.