I guess all children are often embarrassed by their parents, but sometimes I think my dad worked extra hard to make this generalization specifically true for me and my sister. In addition to trying to pawn my sister off on random hot waiters–like, please take pitty on my homely daughter and escort her to the drive-in–my dad, who’s always been a pretty big guy, used to walk around the house wearing only his terry-cloth sleep shorts. Bare-chested, he’d answer the door in these shorts, welcome my friends into our home in these shorts. I can still see the skin under his arms flapping as he’d wave his hands in the air. “Come right on in here!”

When I think about growing up, I don’t remember a time when Dad didn’t wear those sleep shorts around the house, especially in the evenings. They were dark blue, made from this fuzzy towel material, with an elastic band that stretched as Dad did. Quite literally, he wore them for years. With each wearing and each washing, the shorts wore progressively thinner, until they eventually wore out. You know how it goes with your favorite item of clothing. Sooner or later you have to say goodbye.

When I was a teenager, Dad’s terry-cloth shorts were at their thinnest. Truly, they were long past retirement age. They should have been put out to pasture when I was still in the single digits. But you know how people hang on to things. Anyway, I remember when my best friend, David, saw Dad in those shorts for the first time. He nearly came unglued from laughing so hard. He said, “What the hell is your dad wearing?”

Several weeks ago I asked my friends on Facebook, “What’s one movie that always makes you cry?” Y’all, I got a hundred suggestions, but the big winner was The Notebook. If you don’t know, The Notebook is about a man whose wife has Alzheimer’s. Every day he reads to her (from a notebook) the story of how they met and fell in love. In hearing their story, briefly, she comes back to him. She becomes lucid. But that’s how strong their love is. If only for a few minutes, it makes the impossible possible.

According to everyone I’ve ever talked to, The Notebook is a real tear-jerker, and if you haven’t seen it, I’m sure you can imagine why. Well, I watched it last night for the first time, and everyone was right. I was a mess. But I wasn’t a mess because of the couple’s beautiful, longterm relationship or the fact that the wife (Allie) often couldn’t remember her husband (Noah) or their children. Honestly, I don’t have a lot of experience with love stories that last or loving someone who slowly fades away. Rather, I was a mess during the scene in which Noah introduces Allie to his father for the first time.

First, let’s back up just a moment. Still a teenager, Noah works at the lumberyard. He’s poor. Allie, on the other hand, comes from old money. When her parents find out about Noah, they are somewhat gracious, but mostly furious. They don’t think Noah is good enough for their daughter, and they forbid her from seeing him again. However, when Noah’s father meets Allie, he welcomes her with open arms. He doesn’t ask her how much money she makes.

In the scene that still breaks me up to think about it, Noah and his father are sitting on their front porch, and Noah is reading poetry–Walt Whitman–to his father. Allie comes up, and Noah’s father takes control. He says, “You’re much prettier than Noah let on.” When Allie asks what Noah was reading, Noah’s father says, “I’m a Tennyson man, but Noah likes Whitman. When he was a child, he used to stutter, so I had him read poetry to me. Eventually the stuttering went away.” Frustrated that his dad has revealed something embarrassing about him, Noah raises his fist in the air and says, “Dad!” Then he looks at Allie and says, “I used to stammer.”

Noah’s dad says, “Stammer–stutter–what’s the difference?” Then he says, “How about we go inside and eat some breakfast. Allie, do you want some breakfast?” Noah says, “Dad, it’s ten at night.” Then Noah’s dad says, “Who cares? You can eat pancakes any damn time you want to–come on.”

Y’all, this scene took me completely by surprise. I was a wreck. Granted, it doesn’t take much these days, but I went back and watched the scene multiple times. As I’ve continued to think it, I know that it tears me up because Noah’s dad is my dad. Granted, he wasn’t wearing terry-cloth shorts in the movie, but he was just-enough embarrassing. At the same time, he was completely welcoming and non-judgmental. Noah may have been hesitant, but Allie was completely smitten, both with Noah and his family.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized what a great example my parents and even some of my extended family have given me. My dad may have worn way-too-thin terry-cloth shorts, but he’s always had an open-door policy. In thirty-seven years, I can’t think of one person who has not been welcome around here. Girls, boys–gays, straights–it’s never mattered. And everyone loves my father. Despite any embarrassment I may have felt, my friends have always told me, “Your dad is so cool.”

When I was in my early twenties, when I first started teaching dance, I had a dance partner (Megan) who was six or seven years my junior. The first time I picked her up for a dance, her father, Wade, met me at their door in a pair of tiger-stripped boxers–and nothing else. Megan was running down the hall like someone in a slow-motion movie, trying to stop him. But before she got to the door, Wade and I were already laughing. I told him I wished I had a pair of boxers like his. I can still him saying, “Get in this house, young man.”

Over fifteen years later, Megan and I are still friends. A few years ago, Wade passed away, and I spoke at his funeral. I talked about his tiger-stripped boxers and his saying, “Get in this house.” In all the years that I knew him, that’s the way he always greeted me. Usually in his boxers, he’d say, “Get in this house.”

I guess I tell this story because just like my friends think my dad is cool, I think Wade was cool. I love the fact that he was completely himself and didn’t give a shit what anyone else thought about him. He used to flip people the bird and say, “Sit on it and spin.” My point is–by simply being himself, he communicated to me that it was okay to be myself. Silently he told me, “You don’t have to impress me. You don’t have to put on a show here.”

As I consider The Notebook and Noah and his father, as I consider Wade, I realize the gift my father, his terry-cloth shorts, and my family have given me. By having a come-as-you-are, open-door policy, they’ve shown me that love is all-encompassing. It’s not concerned with what you’re wearing or not wearing, and it doesn’t ask how much money you make per hour. Recently when I was feeling embarrassed about not being able to better support myself and be in a place of my own, my dad broke down in tears. (He blamed his emotion on his recent heart problems.) He said, “Honey, you’re ALWAYS welcome here.” I suppose this is what love does. Often disguising itself in a pair of terry-cloth shorts or tiger-stripped boxers, love stands at the front door and says, “You don’t have to change a thing about yourself to come inside.”