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From the New York Times and WBUR Boston, this is Modern Love.

Stories of Love, loss and redemption.

I'm your host, Megna Chakra-Bardi.

Do parents and children ever stop getting to know one another?

Mary Alice Haasdetter puts all of her assumptions about this to the test.

Cynthia Nixon, fresh off a Tony win for her performance in the Broadway drama The Little Foxes,

reads Mary Alice's essay, Dear Dad, We've Been Gay for a Really Long Time.

The first letter was not mine.

Although my brother Charles and I had spent so much time talking about it,

that I felt some ownership.

I was in San Francisco for the Thanksgiving holiday,

and we had read and reread the letter he was planning to send to my father,

changing a word here and there, rearranging sentences.

I suggested he replace gay with homosexual.

The word my father was more likely to have heard,

usually in the same sentence with Abomination.

From the pulpit of the men and I church,

he and my mother had attended for decades.

I was supportive of my brother, respected his courage,

and was flattered that he valued my opinion about something so important,

but I didn't fully understand.

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