It is part of being a parent that we give a huge slice of ourselves away. And I felt like I didn’t have the right to the questions or the conversation. “That’s gender fluid mom,” she’d say, rolling her eyes because I was so ignorant. There were more gendered terms than there had been a decade ago. Now I found myself going back to the websites I visited to get information for my son to learn some things for myself. Long ago I would have identified as genderqueer, sometimes butch, sometimes femme. I hadn’t considered how I identified, independently, in so many years. Nobody had asked me my pronoun in a long time, and I realized I wasn’t exactly sure. I had started working again, and at work it was customary to introduce yourself with your pronoun. I was the mother of a transgender boy and the partner of a transgender person. Everything people felt they shouldn’t ask a trans person because it might be rude, they asked me. I became the expert on transgender issues. My son struggled and we struggled, as queer parents who hadn’t anticipated what it would be like to see their own experiences played out across another generation. I spent hours advocating for him at school, finding a supportive summer camp, connecting with play groups and conferences and other families. I was even more terrified for my son than I had been for my partner. But having a transgender son is a lot different than having a transgender partner. I immediately took him to the boys section at Target and told him he could have anything he wanted. “Did you do this?”Ībout a year later my child came out as transgender.
“I don’t like any of this,” I told my partner. There were rayon items and ruffles, plain turquoise T-shirts and mom jeans. “Who got into my closet?” I actually asked. One day, when my youngest child was 7, I opened my closet and had to do a double-take. I stopped paying attention to what I wore. I was a stay-at-home mom and I was with my kids from the second I got up until I put them to bed at night. Once we had our children I turned every fiber of my being over to being a mother. His story was the story, my character was the sidekick. If he was silent and irritable, I thought he was deep. If he got angry and started throwing things, it was understandable, because of the oppression he faced as a trans person. I saw my partner’s gender as central: I was there to be supportive in his transition. My best dish was stuffed zucchini and I served it twice a week. I tried being wifely in the kitchen but I am a terrible cook. My butch girlfriend had morphed into my transgender partner. One time a man drove around the block to come back and give me his number. When I walked down the street, men catcalled me and I didn’t give a shit. I felt even tougher than when I passed as a boy. Knee-high boots, mesh dresses, and makeup. And they did.īy the time I graduated Cal, I had gone femme. The girls from high school had all found “real” boyfriends and they didn’t care anyway. They had an underwear drawer that was half boxer shorts and half lacy items. They had a butch girlfriend who sported polyester and flannel and was much tougher than them. I don’t know what to do with this kid’s gender. I’m not sure how I came up with that combination. I’m wearing skater pants, a bodysuit, and I have a closely shaved head. There’s a picture of me on the University of California-Berkeley campus on the day of my transfer orientation. I imagined growing up to be something approximating a man. I had an idea that maybe I could be someone’s boyfriend, let her wear my bomber jacket on a cold Friday night, open the car door, get laid. There were pretty girls at my high school who liked me. I liked the feeling of smoking cigarettes on the corner and talking shit and imagining I could kick a guy’s ass. Security guards called me “young man,” checkers called me “sir.” I liked it. The first time I cut all my hair off my mother said, “I don’t like the implications of that.” I wore baggy overalls and a wallet chain and Simple shoes. A really wicked laugh.” He doesn’t look up. “You know, long white curls, protest stories, spiritual, sensible shoes. “I’m just going to turn out like an old movement woman,” I tell Jonah. The wiry curls are starting to take over.
The copper is now shocked with them, and I know it’s not going to be long until my hair is bleached out like an overexposed black and white photo. “But, honey, this time it’s important,” I say.Īfter the election I developed white streaks almost overnight.
“Please quit telling me about your hair,” my partner says. Over the years I have grown my hair into ringlets and shaved them off at least a dozen times. But now I am returning to an ownership of my own identity. It is part of being in a partnership that we bend and adapt.