My kid crushed every title I suggested
My oldest kid sent me an email with the subject line: “DO NOT LET Z SEE THIS EMAIL UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES OR I WILL KILL YOU AND HIM.”
She was telling me she’s trans.
When she was really young she wore girl clothes. I went with it for a while. We have pictures of her in a tutu. At Target she insisted we shop in the girls’ section. But around age five we said that’s enough. And she said okay.
Of course I wish that didn’t happen, but I knew nothing about trans in 2006.
Though I remember a few years earlier I coached a woman raising her kids gender neutral. I remember thinking: we should stop talking about her career and start talking about how she was going to find clothes for those kids.
For me it was always the clothes.
I waited until she was ready for me to write about this, which meant I wrote a lot about Z. After a few years someone said, “I think Z is your favorite.” I was so relieved when she said she was ready.
I asked how she’d want me to start.
“Not with you,” she said. “The story is not about you.”
“Everything I write is about me.”
At the beginning I stressed about the statistic that 41% of transgender adults attempt suicide. She said, “Mom, if I were going to kill myself it would have been last semester when I got a D.”
So I moved on to more practical concerns.
The first name she picked was Janet. I told her Janet is a name for wearing an apron while day-drinking when Kennedy was president. She told me it was her name to pick. I said, “Remember that woman on The Good Place who turns out to be a robot? Her name is Janet.” She kept it for a few months and then chose Natalie.
I invited Natalie to lunch, to get nails done, to a girl movie. She said, “Mom. There are lots of ways to be feminine. Those aren’t my ways.”
My mother always dressed beautifully and I spent my young adult years wishing I knew how to buy clothes like her. So I decided to be the mom who helps with that. I bought a bunch of clothes Natalie said she wasn’t ready to wear. Fine — she was hiding under a baggy sweatshirt and jeans just like I did when my body was changing. I hung the new clothes in my closet in case she changed her mind.
I asked if this means she’s also not interested in the purse I bought.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what it means.”
So I used the purse myself. She didn’t want my input on anything. Except she found a pair of my earrings on my nightstand and said, “Oh, those are nice. Can I have them?”
I was so happy to say yes. Then I never saw them again.
Until this morning. She had a presentation and wanted to look professional. She found the clothes in my closet, picked out a form-fitting sweater, fluffed her long curly hair, and tucked it behind those earrings.
“Do I look professional?”
“You look beautiful. And professional.”
I thought transitioning was about gender. It turns out it’s about who gets to tell the story. Natalie is writing herself. And I’m learning to stop editing.
Nice post. Sure, “Everything I write is about me,” but not in a selfish way, but as nice way of jumping into the lesson. Call it a technique of blog-parable. Today’s post was delightfully non selfish as you kept seeing things from the young lady’s perspective as much as possible. Yet there was still a lesson to your post, and that was delightful too.
I won’t be so bold as to state the lesson, because English literature, in the past several decades, had made it a point the lesson is not to be explicit anymore, and not to be put in the mouth of a character.
I will say that I figure your humble, “And I’m learning to stop editing” is intended as a metaphor or something, and not as boringly literal.
Coincidentally, just this week a father was blogging about driving his daughter in a fancy rental car, and commenters said that a father, however cool, cannot be cool to his teenage daughter. You might, Penelope, be in a similar dynamic.
That observation about parents cannot be cool – so true! I knew it was coming, but I don’t think I realized how complete it would be.
You know, this reminds me of the strategy that they recommend for period readiness for young girls – having all the supplies in an easily accessible place and not make too big of a deal about it- having everything ready to go when they are ready is such a great form of care & love. Well done.
That’s a great analogy. I like that I get to learn a whole new range of kid stuff, even know.