What Is a Guncle?

There are, apparently, some expectations.

A Guncle should be fabulous. He should give excellent presents, have strong opinions about brunch, know where to get tickets, and possess at least one skill that makes the other adults at a family gathering question their own adequacy.

He may arrive with something slightly extravagant. He will probably encourage the children, occasionally in ways their parents wish he wouldn't. And if popular culture is to be believed, he has impeccable taste, disposable income, no children of his own, and exists primarily to make childhood considerably more fabulous.

It's a fun stereotype.

Some of us may even be guilty of occasionally reinforcing it.

But it's not what makes someone a Guncle.

So, What Is a Guncle?

The simplest answer is right there in the word: gay + uncle = Guncle.

The term has come to describe gay uncles and, more broadly, the LGBTQ+ aunts, uncles, honorary uncles, family friends, and members of chosen family who occupy a special place in the lives of the kids they love.

But definitions get tricky when you're talking about relationships, because there isn't one kind of Guncle any more than there is one kind of family or one kind of kid.

The Guncle who takes his niece fishing is no less a Guncle than the one who flies his nephews to New York and gets Broadway tickets. The shy Guncle counts. The suburban Guncle counts. The Guncle who couldn't identify a show tune if you spotted him the first eight bars counts.

So does the one who knows every word.

The fun stuff can absolutely be part of it. Bring the ridiculous present. Take the trip. Wear the matching outfits. Spoil them a little.

That's part of the joy.

But the gift isn't what makes the relationship.

The relationship is the gift.

Another Person in the Constellation

Every child enters a world already populated by adults: parents and grandparents, teachers and coaches, aunts and uncles, neighbors and family friends.

And if they're lucky, there are enough of them.

Because no single adult can be everything a child will ever need, nor should anyone have to be. Different people see different things in us. They teach us different things, make us laugh in different ways, know different pieces of our history, and offer different perspectives on the world.

A Guncle doesn't replace Mom or Dad. He brings another relationship into that constellation—another person who knows you, remembers, notices when you've changed, and keeps learning who you're becoming.

Another person who can look at you at eight, eighteen or twenty-eight and continue communicating the same thing:

You are worth knowing.

What Showing Up Really Says

We talk a lot around here about showing up, and showing up can look wonderfully ordinary.

It can mean answering the phone, remembering the birthday, sitting through the recital, standing in the bleachers or playing cards with the only kid at the family gathering. It can mean listening to the story you've already heard twelve times, sending something ridiculous in the mail for no particular reason, or calling on their birthday to sing the same stupid song you've been singing for years.

None of those things is particularly profound on its own. But together, they begin to say something: you are worth my time, you are worth my attention, you are worth knowing.

And perhaps that's why showing up matters so much. It isn't simply about physical presence. Sometimes distance, family circumstances, work, geography or life itself makes that impossible.

Showing up is finding whatever way the relationship allows you to say:

I'm still here.

When They Start Asking the Questions

There is a moment that has happened, in one form or another, with several of the kids in our lives.

They always knew us as Uncle Jeff and Uncle Danny. No explanation required. We simply came as a package deal.

When they were little, that was enough. Kids are remarkably comfortable accepting the architecture of their world before they understand why any of it is built the way it is.

Then, eventually, they got older. They began to understand that Momma and Daddy weren't simply two adults who lived in the same house. They loved each other. They were partners. There was something about that relationship that was different from the other relationships around them.

And at some point, each kid found a moment—usually a private one—to ask some version of the same question:

“Do you love Uncle Jeff like Momma loves Daddy?”

Yes.

That was usually all it took. They'd think about it for a moment and then run off to whatever they had been doing before.

There was no grand conversation, no carefully prepared explanation about gay relationships, no lesson in tolerance or acceptance. They were simply trying to understand how the people they loved fit together.

Looking back, though, something about those little conversations means much more to me now than it did then.

They trusted us enough to ask.

They believed we would tell them the truth and take the question seriously. They believed they could ask without being made to feel embarrassed or foolish. And they believed we might help them understand something about their world that they didn't understand yet.

That's a remarkable privilege.

Because you can't appoint yourself a trusted adult in a child's life. Their parents can introduce you, call you Uncle, invite you to every birthday and trust you completely with their child.

But eventually, the kid gets a vote.

Trust accumulates slowly, through all those conversations, birthdays, baseball games and ridiculous songs, until one day a kid realizes something much bigger than any of them:

I can bring my questions here.

The Kid Doesn't Stay Eight

There's something wonderful about knowing a child from the beginning. You remember versions of them they can barely remember themselves—the foods they wouldn't eat, what made them laugh, what frightened them, what they wanted to be when they grew up.

When they're little, their parents tell you who they are.

He's obsessed with baseball. She's shy around new people. He won't eat anything green. She hasn't stopped talking about dinosaurs for six months.

Then they get older.

And eventually, they tell you who they are.

They tell you what they believe, who they love, what scares them, what they want, what they're proud of and sometimes what they've screwed up. And if we're fortunate enough that they trust us with those things, our job isn't to keep trying to turn them back into the child we remember.

Loving a child as they grow up can't only mean remembering who they were.

It means remaining interested in who they're becoming.

Because relationships change when people do. The eight-year-old becomes the teenager, and the teenager becomes the college student. There are first loves and first heartbreaks. Careers begin. People move away. Families change. People we love die. Life happens to them, just as life keeps happening to us.

The relationship that worked when someone was eight cannot remain exactly the same when they're eighteen or twenty-eight. So we pay attention. We meet them where they are, and when the relationship changes, we change with it.

I want to know who you are now. And I want to keep knowing who you become.

And somewhere along the way, something else changes too.

Most of these kids didn't choose us in the beginning. Their parents did. We loved their parents, their parents had children, and suddenly there were little people being introduced to Uncle Jeff and Uncle Danny. We were simply part of the world they inherited.

But eventually, the kid gets a choice about that, too. Their parents aren't arranging the relationship anymore. They grow up, build lives of their own and, if we're very lucky, keep making room for us in them.

The children our friends brought into our lives become adults who choose to keep us in theirs.

Their parents chose us first.

Eventually, they choose us back.

So Maybe That's a Guncle

Maybe that's why it's so difficult to define a Guncle by what he does.

He might be the one who buys the concert tickets or the one who takes his niece fishing. He might wear the ridiculous matching shirt, sit quietly in the audience, play cards at the kitchen table, or live across the country and answer the phone.

There is no personality test, no spending requirement and no correct way to do this.

Because being a Guncle isn't a role you perform.

It's a relationship you keep.

Over the years, all those presents and ballgames and birthday calls and ordinary afternoons can accumulate into something much bigger than any one of them: trust.

A child learns that you're another safe place in their world. Someone who will listen, tell them the truth and take the question seriously. Someone who will keep paying attention as they become a person neither of you could have imagined when you first met.

Maybe that's the real magic in this supposedly magical person.

Not that he makes childhood more fabulous.

That he gives a child one more person who believes they are worth knowing.

And if we're very lucky, we get to keep knowing them.

At eight.

At eighteen.

At twenty-eight.

And beyond.

Not because they're still the children we fell in love with all those years ago.

Because we want to know the people they've become.

You mattered to me then. You matter to me now. I'm still here.

And I want to keep knowing who you become.