I was blessed with parents who encouraged me, when I was growing up, to push myself and try absolutely everything that interested me. Nevertheless, there were some things they couldn’t help but encourage more than others. And although he smothered me in unconditional affection, somewhere in the back of my mind, I always felt my father was proudest of me when I did things that showed daring, independence and strength of character. “Boy” things. I doubt he did it consciously, but I felt he was proudest of me when I built things and got myself a little dirty. He’d say “tiens, v’là mon gars manqué encore”. Not wanting to disappoint, I kept my hair short and tried not to be too much of a girl.

Every November, he’d go on a deer hunting trip in Vermont. One day, as he was packing all his equipment, he turned to me and said,

“You know, you’d cost me a lot more if you were a boy”.

It was one of those things that stay with you forever, because for me it was what confirmed it, that back-of-my-mind feeling that Dad was secretly proud of the tomboy side of me, and that had I been a boy, we would have gone on those trips together.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a family reunion at the cottage where I spent my childhood summers. It was incredible going back there after 15 years: huge houses were now small summer shacks, what were once long bike expeditions, now short walks. Unbreachable chasms out of which I once hunted hundreds of frogs, mere ditches.

Our Vermont relatives were there, too, and Dad reminisced about his hunting trips of old. “I’d really love to show you all the spots where I used to go”, he said to me, so innocently. “How would you like to take a road trip there this fall, just you and me?”

Yeah, Dad. You have no idea how much