The Living Years
- Oct 7, 2022
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 3, 2022
If you know the song this entry is titled after, you're already going to have it stuck in your head by now.
If you don't know it, look it up and listen to it. It's from 1989. "Oh that's old. Imagine listening to music from the 80s." Yeah yeah. You know, if you're putting that attitude on this... ironically, this post may be more targeted to you than you yet know.
There is a field in Maryland full of flat little stones with engravings on them. My father is under one of them; with him, in an urn, is my mother. She was cremated, because since she passed first (cancer is a fucker) and my parents wanted to be with each other, she wasn't eligible for interment in a military cemetery. This way, whenever Dad shuffled off his mortal coil, she could be placed with him. It was the only way.
I say this just to precisely point out that both of my parents are now gone, and there is no way I can talk to them in any usefully meaningful way anymore.
I was probably six the first time I realized that wearing only boy's clothing was boring. That it was much more fun to run around my grandmother's yard in a skirt. I only know this because my grandmother lived a plane ride away, and we'd go there for the summer; and I didn't take my first plane ride until I was in first grade. She had a large assembly of old clothes in the garage that was constantly being sorted around and moved around for a yard sale, and I just... adopted them as my own.
It's easy to write off something your five year old does as just being a dumb kid. I don't remember if my dad ever had a reaction to it (he didn't stay; he'd put us on the plane at the airport and we'd fly out for the summer, and then towards the end he'd make the drive, pick us up, and we'd drive back). I know my mom kinda wanly laughed it off and said you're going to outgrow it. My grandmother had an entirely different reaction, but my relationship with her is an interesting story in itself and not relevant here.
I do know I was upset when one summer I discovered that the clothes had been tossed. But they were MY clothes! "You're a bit old for that now, Andrew," my mom had said.
Clearly not. It was still a lot of who I was as a teen; especially in high school, although at the time the only clothes I had access to were things I pilfered from my mom (much to her repeated consternation) and the occasional hand me down I got from my friend Leigh. That, and a small bag of... you know, I'm ashamed to admit it, but this is me being honest and I fucking well know I'm not the only one. Of clothes that I lifted from my high school theater's wardrobe department, and some random fellow female student's sports bra and black skirt that was inexplicably left backstage (this one puzzles me to this day, because there's no reason they would have been where I found them, but...).
Don't look at me like that. When you're 16 and have no money this is frequently how CD/trans wardrobes get built.
So it's very much a lie for me to say that neither of my parents knew. If my dad knew, he never said anything. My mom knew and as long as I stopped stealing her clothes she turned a blind eye.
But then again, at that time, I thought I was just a crossdresser.
Mom: Are you gay?
Andrew: No!
Mom: Do you want to be a girl?
Andrew: ...nO?
I graduated high school. Met a girl, had some sort of brain fit, enlisted in the Army. Managed to fall down the stairs, cost some taxpayers a bit of money for my recovery to get determined damaged goods, and then got sent home on a bus. My knee and ankle never would recover. This was 1995.
I got a job. Mind you, I was still living at home. I didn't have to pay rent, I didn't have a car payment... ok, so I was a bit of a trope. But suddenly... I had money.
After building a new computer... I realized that I could buy clothes. Whatever the fuck I wanted. Because it was my money. And I bought. Half of my closet was dresses and skirts. Two entire drawers of my dresser were given over suddenly to shirts and undies and the occasional bra. Dad never went into my room. Mom was the only one who did, for laundry (she never touched my girl stuff).
I even took to wearing them around the house... at times. "Andrew," my mom would say, as I was wandering up from the basement to get a snack, "I don't mind if you wear that but you better change before Dad gets home." I accepted that. A black bodysuit and wooden beaded necklace and long crinkly brown and green broomstick skirt might have been a bit much for that occasion. (I miss the 90s. I lived in that fit constantly.) Or a blue floral skort, that definitely looked like a mini from the front, but I could kinda pass that off around Mom because "At least those look like shorts from the back."
(I would never grow out of my adoration of bodysuits.)
At some point, I told Tiana. It... did not go well.
Leigh knew, already, clearly. Most, if not all of my other friends, did not; save for a few I had online, like Winnie.
At this point, as far as I knew, Dad still didn't know. And if he did, he was silent on the topic.
Also, at this point, I was starting to grow my hair out. Mostly because I couldn't be bothered to get a haircut; partly because I was in reaction to having had it buzzed for the Army; partly because I liked feeling it brush against my shoulders and back when I was aiming for pretty. (It would get pretty long - a little lower than mid-back, and insanely irritating to maintain, before I decided to cut it all off in 1998). I miss that hair, but with my hairline there's no way it would ever work again. Would be half-grey at this point now as well, but I digress.
As I said, my reveal to Tiana did not go well. Some days she acted like she didn't mind. Some days it made her upset (which made me upset because I didn't want her that way). Some days she loathed the idea; some days she borrowed my clothes. It was a couple of years of mental whiplash that in the end partly contributed to the demise of our relationship, and also to my suicide attempt. (But like I implied in another post... things got better.)
Maybe this is why I didn't tell my dad? The fear of similar rejection? He was always someone who quietly held his own unshakable opinions about things, and point in fact he effectively disowned two of his other children over other issues. So I don't know. I'll never know. What I do know is for whatever reason, I could never bring myself to tell him, and that decision was probably for the best at the time. Because I really didn't know.
Grandma's friend Elsa, mid-conversation around our kitchen table: ...so then it turned out, she was dating.. a BLACK MAN.
Mom: ...okay?
Grandma: [embarrassed silence]
Dad: What about it?
Elsa: Well, it's just... WRONG, you know. [clutching metaphorical pearls]
Dad: Why is it wrong?
Elsa: Well, it just IS. I mean... he was a BLACK MAN. Don't tell me that wouldn't bother you!
Dad: No, not really.
Elsa: You mean to tell me that you'd... associate and TRUST a BLACK MAN?
Dad, Navy mode: Yes. In fact, I was in the US Navy for a good long time and not only would I have trusted a fellow black sailor, I did, enough that I'm sure my own life has probably been saved by one many times over. So no, I don't see anything wrong with it. Good for her.
I should note that, 1) Elsa was never again welcome in the house after that (which Grandma didn't object to; she was intensely embarrassed by it), and b) when she said BLACK MAN, she wasn't saying BLACK MAN, but that other specific word. You know the one.
I relate this dialogue to more or less point out that Dad was fairly progressive in a lot of ways; as far as I can tell, fairly politically centrist (and if actually conservative, then at the very least far to the left end of that band), and generally open minded to a point.
Still, I felt telling him about my crossdressing might have been one bridge too far. So I never did.
How would my parents take it, if I could tell them now that I was openly aware of my genderfluid identity? "Hi Mom, hi Dad... it's me, your son Andrew. Except I'm also your daughter Miranda."
I know who I am now, and I'm not embarrassed by myself. Just lacking in a bit of confidence. Anyone I shield myself from I do either out of self-preservation, or as a favor to another - and the number of people on that list I permit such requests from is dwindling rapidly as I care less and less about the reactions of others.
So I think yes, now, I'd tell them. I don't know how it goes. I would hope they would appreciate and respect my words, as an adult, to another adult. I know they'd still see me as their kid, though.
But that's a conversation that is over that foggy border into the land of impossibility now.
Because it's too late, it's too late
When we die...
I've been needing to visit that cemetery for a a while now. I may be the only one of the kids that hasn't gone yet, and that... guts me.
I know I won't handle it well.
I know I'll need to have a moment, where I ask my own wife and kids to let me have a moment at the stone...
I will probably cry. Because I'd be coming out as genderfluid to my parents, at their grave, and I'll never know what their reaction would be.
There may be a point in your life you will need to confess to your parents things about you that they really, really should know. Even if it upsets them. Even if it ends the world for everyone concerned. You deserve to be authentically honest to yourself and everyone around you and that includes letting in others on the facts about yourself. At worst, they will reject you, disown you, shame you, but in the end their reaction to the truth about you is their problem, their mental hangup to deal with. Not yours. And you are not responsible for the behavior of others. You're too good for them and if they won't, others will love you. Things will always get better, just not the way you want.
At best? They'll respect your honesty, and love and support you. Either way you get an answer, and a burden off your chest.
Don't wait until it's too late, and they're in the ground.
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