Sarah, once my daughter, is now Finn, a member of the transgender community. Those are hard words to write.
I
want to love the man my daughter has become, but floundering in the
torrent of her change and my resistance to it, I fear I'll never make it
across my river of anger and sorrow.
I think about Sarah growing
up, how she always acted with courage and fortitude. In junior high she
studied Russian because it was "a challenge." In high school she proved
she wasn't too small to play water polo goalie.
VIDEO: Living with a secret
In
college she announced she was gay. I hoped her lesbianism might be a
passing phase, but instead Sarah began to dress in male clothes and bind
her breasts. On her Facebook page, she announced she'd changed her name
to Finn.
Trying to be supportive, I called her SarahFinn.
Then
one December day, just before her father and I were leaving on a
vacation, a handwritten letter on lined paper ripped from a notebook
arrived in our mailbox.
"I want to be completely honest about who I
am and what's going on in my life," our daughter wrote. "I went to
Florida, had my breasts removed and am now taking hormones." She said
she feared being rejected but told us our relationship meant a lot to
her.
Frantically we tried to reach her by phone in Oregon, without
success. My husband talked me out of canceling our trip and flying to
visit her. A week away to calm ourselves, he insisted, would be for the
best.
When we returned, we all agreed that a phone conversation
would not do, and Finn promised to visit us in Los Angeles after New
Year's.
While waiting, I read voraciously. I knew so little about
issues of gender identity. When travel writer James Morris had
reassignment surgery in 1972, becoming Jan Morris, I was a mother with
two toddlers and had neither the time nor inclination to learn more.
Now
the issue was knocking at my door. I started reading firsthand accounts
of people like Jennifer Finney Boylan, who described how uncomfortable
she had felt in her own skin. But the stories only increased my
discomfort. It was painful to think that my child, whom I had believed
to be generally happy, had in truth been miserable.
Every parent
knows her child's life cannot be stress free, but the books I was
reading showed me just how much she must have suffered for the secret
she kept from friends, siblings and parents. How had it felt to put a
dress on for the prom? To go on sleepovers? To long to be who you
weren't?
I began to feel more sympathy for her, but I still
struggled with my feelings. A transgender child brings a parent face to
face with death. The daughter I had known and loved was gone; a stranger
with facial hair and a deep voice had taken her place.
Everything
was painful. Seeing a photo of Sarah as the kindergarten circus
ringmaster brought tears. I wondered whether it all could have been
prevented, and found myself idly thinking things like: If I'd let her do
kick-boxing, would she still be Sarah?
Writing, usually a
comfort, became a chore. My mind, filled with the rapidly changing story
of my child, left no room for fiction.
Finn put off coming to visit until spring, so we began to "talk" via email.
"Your sadness is a hard thing to carry," Finn wrote.
I replied: "You can't expect us to jump for joy."
"You think I'm a freak of nature," Finn wrote back.
"Not a freak of nature, however I'm worried that you are troubled."
"I
have friends. I'm on the dean's list. I exercise regularly, cook, and
push myself to learn. Does that sound like a troubled person?"
I had to admit it didn't.
A new honesty was developing between us.
Then Finn arrived.
The
first day we went out for lunch and I tried again to understand her — I
couldn't yet say "his" — motivation and actions. Finn in turn wanted to
know why we couldn't just accept the changes. The conversation ended in
tears.
Later we spoke with a gender-friendly therapist, and
although I cried and my husband sulked, we seemed to be moving forward.
At the therapist's request we tried to call our child Finn. The name was
difficult, and the pronouns even harder. "She" often slipped out. So
did the word "daughter."
Finn seemed to finally get a glimpse of how painful this was for his parents.
Still, when he returned to Oregon, the goodbye at the airport was short and quick; the hug strained.
Then three things happened.
The
first was that my granddaughter took one of the books I had written to
share with her kindergarten class. She explained: "It's dedicated to
Henya, my mother, Jonathon, my uncle, Alan, my uncle and Sarah, who used
to be my aunt but now is my uncle." I longed to feel that same casual
acceptance.
The second was a comment from a friend. Trying to make
me feel better, she said, "When you have four children, you're bound to
have one who is a failure."
The words shocked me. Was Finn a
failure? I certainly didn't want to think so, but unless I was willing
to let go of my judgments, it was hard to see how else to think of him.
And
then came the third event: I had an epiphany. One morning, in a
half-asleep, half-awake state, I realized what Sarah had done to be true
to herself was brave and incredibly courageous.
Seeing Finn's action in that light gave me cause for celebration. He was the same person he had been as a she.
Last
week Finn came home for a visit. He took photographs for an art school
project. We laughed over coffee, made our favorite goat cheese pizza,
gossiped about family and reminisced about old times.
I realized what I should have known all along: The packaging may be different, but what's inside Finn is unchanged.
There
will be days when feelings of what-might-have-been will return. I'm
still struggling to swim across my river of sorrow and anger to join
Finn on the far bank.
But I feel like I might be getting close.
Ann
Whitford Paul latest children's books are "Word Builder" and "Tortuga
in Trouble." She is also the author of a book for adults, "Writing
Picture Books: A Hands-On Guide from Story Creation to Publication."