we’re all bozos on this bus

there are many different ways to be trans.
it’s true for the grown women i know who are transgender/transsexual.
it is just as true for the children whom i know only through the stories that their parents tell.

but now, because of ziona’s new email friend, and because ziona can’t really type yet, i am privvy to insights into the way of two girls, in very different ways, expressing their femininity.

ziona has already mentioned on many occasions to me that she will marry a woman someday, raise children together. she is a girl much like i was as a child. likes things other girls don’t. not afraid of bugs. likes lizards, enjoys a rich fantasy life but one that is the stuff of legends and science fiction. she played with hannah montana dolls for a while, mostly as a way to engage with her cousin lexi. but she also loves nano bugs, castles with dragons and faeries and such things. she isn’t much into makeup, and doesn’t think she’ll ever like it. she doesn’t wear jewelry and such. and tho all these things might change as she enters into that getting breasts stage of becoming a woman, i recognise in her the same sort of spirit that dwelt in me as a young girl.

her friend on the other hand, loves unicorns and fashion dolls. she wears makeup, (she’s 11) and does her nails. she doesn’t like to play video games.

two girls, both born with the wrong body, each unfolding their femininity in very different ways.

it is sometimes tempting for me to think that perhaps ziona is simply mirroring my preferences, my behaviour and my attitudes. but then, my mother wore a little makeup and was definitely not attracted to women. she didn’t like bugs, still freaks out at the very idea much less the sight of a lizard, so really, how much of her rubbed off on me?

as for my daughter’s new friend, she has only ‘transitioned’ two months ago. so how much of her behaviours and preferences might be a part of her just wanting to be as ‘other than’ a boy as possible? is her mother ‘into’ makeup, jewelry? would that matter?

all my girlfriends when we were growing up were into boys, makeup…all the usual things. i inherently knew that i couldn’t share with them the crush i felt for our 8th grade english teacher, ms morel. or how it drove me to distraction when we would change clothes in front of each other. for a while i tried to be like them. but one can’t be other than one’s self for very long.

it isn’t the same as these transgender kids are going through. i know. but i had to get over trying to be what i wasn’t. in a way, we all have to. and that’s the nexus that is shared in common with all beings: gay or straight, trans or cis. we have all had to decide to become who we are. perhaps that is the way to help others see, understand, and be compassionate toward the different-ness they interpose between themselves and our transgender children, our gay and lesbian kids, our lgbt friends and family. that point of sameness we share. that moment when we finally decided to become who we are! despite peers, environment, social acceptance, societal conditioning or even our own self-imposed notions and limitations.

like these kids, we are always becoming who we are. unfolding our most true self at any given moment. and how can that be a bad thing?

i have a saying i like to say…don’t remember where i first heard it, but it stuck and is how i excuse short-comings of myself and others, especially the tendency to short-change those whose shoes we haven’t tried to walk in.

the saying is:
“we’re all bozos on this bus”
it’s so true.

the only real difference between us, is how we apply our clown face.
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peek a boo…i see you!

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letting go

within the space of about ten days so much has changed. i must admit, my head is actually reeling!

first we had the news that ziona has gotten to the tanner level where the time is now to start puberty blockers. at just nine years old, and her third year living ‘outloud’ as the girl she’s always been, we are going to begin her long journey forward to make her body fall in line with her brain.

and today, she actually ‘gave up’ her old swingset and playhouse from the backyard. usually, she hangs onto things forever! really! she still has the first ever stuffed toy she got at one day old when i went to retrieve her from the hospital. there’s a box in the closet full of thomas the train tracks and such that is next to go.

it is nice that she is finally able to let go of these things. in a way, she will have lots of stuff to let go of in the months and years to come. but i feel a bit of sadness at all this letting go.

she is saying goodbye to her childhood these days. and so am i… it rather reminds me of when i finally let go of the son i thought i had been raising and accepted the daughter who had been there all along.

generally i like the whole process of ‘letting go’. i have been through alot of it myself throughout life. i have let go of lovers who’ve moved on. of children once they’ve flown the nest. of friends and family who have died. and as much as such letting go can be fraught with little sorrows, it is also full of new tomorrows.

so today the backyard no longer looks like a playground. now she and i are busy planning a garden for the space where the swingset was and a swimming pool where once the playhouse stood. of course, most of the hard work on these new projects will have to wait until we’ve returned from our annual cross-country road trip and pilgrimage to our california house. but that’s okay.

letting go is a way of moving forward after all, and it is something at which ziona and i are quite adept.

so, today we said goodbye to a part of her childhood that she had outgrown. and in a few years she will say goodbye to the body that has never suited her. through it all i feel like a hitch-hiker along for the ride of my life!

back-handed blessings

people are the blessings life bestows on us. for better or for worse.

my last post had much to say about the way in which people reject or judge others, set up barriers between their selves and all the ‘someone elses’ that populate their world, or their smaller corner of community. altho i stand by every word, what i neglected to mention is that much blessing comes from these type of folk.

before anyone thinks i’ve completely lost it, allow me to explain by way of a parable.

~ once there was a kind-hearted woman, who was moved to compassion by many things. upon seeing a chrysalis attached to a branch that had fallen to the ground, she decided to bring it inside her home.
when it came time for the new creature to emerge, the woman was fortunate to be present to witness the miracle. so she sat near the branch, which she had stood in a jar upon her table.
the butterfly struggled hard and long to escape it’s confining shell, and the woman thought that she might help it with this trial. ever so gently and carefully, she opened the slit that the creature had made in the chrysalis, just enough so that the butterfly didn’t have to squeeze through such a small opening.
it worked, and the beautiful thing easily came forth its confinement!
after the butterfly emerged, it hung from it’s former cell, drying it’s brightly colored wings. but it couldn’t spread them out, no matter how it tried, they draped its body in folds. ~

what this woman didn’t understand was that the opening through which the emerging butterfly must escape, is small for a reason. the pressure of squeezing through that slit is the way that fluids from its body are pumped into the wings, allowing them to unfurl. without this the wings will be useless. the butterfly wont fly.

not that we necessarily require pressure from social inequality in order to spread our wings, but in my own case, all the rejection and judgement to which i have been subjected by all the ‘someone elses’ in my world have only served to make me stronger in my resolve to be precisely who i am…and i fly!

so for better or for worse, even those who are not well-intentioned have helped me, they are blessings of a kind.

no matter how much i hope for a kinder tomorrow to receive the new creature my daughter will grow to be, somewhere inside me is a faith in her that outweighs the need for this hope. because it is quite obvious to me, that if struggle has made me stronger, it wont be able to crush her! she’s far more advanced a soul than i!

so while hoping things for her future, for her life – after transition, – after reaching the magickal age of eighteen, when she’s an adult and as her parent i’m allowed to breathe a relieved sigh, i remind myself that some of the things that will help her to emerge, spread her beautiful wings and fly might be trials i would never have chosen for her…but may well be one way in which life will bless her.

i love being a mom

i love being a mom.

that said, i admit that part of the fascination
owes to the child-like air that caring for my kids
manages to instill in me.

for example, zeeona loves to be tickled before bed, then ride my back while i assume a pony pose, all the way to her bedroom.

what an awesome way to end each day!

at eight years old she is full of questions, some to which i don’t have the answers. so i am forced to admit that (humility) and follow up by finding the answers. (thank heaven for the internet)

one day as she approaches her teen years, tickle fights before bed will seem beneath her. and rides on my back will become to much physically for me to accomplish. (or not! i’m pretty fit for a woman kicking sixty in the rear)

one day the questions will trickle in more slowly as she grows to be a young woman who prefers to keep secrets and find her own way.

i will miss these days in that time when child-like play surrenders to trying on her grown-up wings.

but unlike with my older daughters, who have already made me a grandmother many times over by now, zeeona will need a bit more help in making it through the dreaded puberty stage.

unlike them, zee will need to have cross hormones, and other such things as will help her body to transition in alignment to her mind.

she will need to speak to therapists (she already has one, but not a specialist in transgender issues. just try finding one of those here in the deep south)

she will have to travel to california for the surgery necessary to change her body even more than the hormones and subsequent puberty will.

all of these kinds of things will make mommy necessary for longer than i was to the neuro-typical cis-gender daughters i raised before her.

my other daughters had need of a natural to most disassociative phase, in which they differentiated their selves from the like-gendered (and only) parent. i had taken enough psych courses in college to allow me to understand that needful part of their developing into persons that were ‘other than’ me.

but i think with zeeona that particular strain on the mother-daughter relationship might not have to be. she will have been struggling with identity for many years by the time she hits sweet sixteen.
she will, by dint of being a transgender person, already have a distinct point of departure from the ‘same-gender’ parent.

at least, that is what i hope.

there will likely be no more little ones for me to raise after her. no inspiration on a daily basis to be child-like and full of the wonder that seeing things through the eyes of a child can impart.

i hope i’ll be able to let go. to allow her to soar like an eagle, not tethered to me like a kite.

and so long as she understands that she can always count on me to be there for her, just the way that i am now, it wont be as hard to watch her venture out on her own.

of course, since she is transgender, i will always be worried about how the world treats her. and that is something with which i didn’t feel a need for concern with my other allegedly ‘normal’ daughters.

i love being a mom!

it would take more than a thousand books to convey a sense of the many ways in which that role has enriched my days.

and when i can no longer fill that position, a little something of heaven will be lost to me…for a time.