Dear Mom, I am no longer your "daughter"

Dear Mom, before I sat down to write this, 42 years went by. Together, we braved a world confused by a white, single parent and a mixed-race kid in the 1970s. I existed in a cloud of gap-toothed uncertainty. Got in fights with boys. Played baseball in the street. Asked you about the rules of football. Wanted to be called Roger.

You shoved yellow bonnets on my head, beamed at my pink dresses, rejoiced in my unsuitably feminine name and forced black saddle shoes on my feet to complement my “Sunday Best.” They were rules you followed. Except I was missing. I didn't want to disappoint you. I didn't want to disappoint the world that had already begun to other me. So I followed the rules, too. Until I didn't. Until you didn’t. Until you realized that I had been crumbling under the weight of "It's a girl!"

Dear Mom, before I sat down to write this, you tried to lead me through a world that fears difference. We contended with your addiction to alcohol and your interminable health issues. You tried your best to help me navigate our reality of food stamps, orange fiberglass welfare-office chairs and walking down the street through a sea of onlookers confused by the helmet you wore in case you had a seizure. You did this even though you probably couldn't even fathom it all yourself. You tried to answer the questions I hurled at you about where I came from. About what I was. You cheered me on even when you couldn’t. When you were passed out. When we weren’t talking. When we couldn’t talk.

You observed, though. That one night on the phone you asked me a question that seemed to have been on your mind for years: "Are you transgender?" It sounded so simple. "If you are," you added, "I would support you no matter what." It was an amazing thing to say that I did not take for granted. Even though I replied with an emphatic "no." Even when I proclaimed loudly that “this is female!” Even when I told you -- told everyone else, told myself -- that I was attempting to somehow redefine femaleness!

Dear Mom, before I sat down to write this, you died. And I am no longer your daughter. Instead, happily, gratefully, peacefully, I am your transgender son. Somehow, perhaps, you are out there, the energy that remains of you, watching over my transition and honoring who I’ve always wanted to be.

You would have been my fiercest advocate and strongest ally. I know this. You would have held the space for my continued progression -- the stages I have moved through since you left; the rules I tried to follow for so long.

love and miss you. Your trans son,

Henry