At Least I’ll Own a Dress…

Bang!

Right after I’d had the visit with the Ph.D, I decided that I was somehow going to pull it together, drive up to NH and stay with my parents for a couple weeks, the reason (not that I needed one) I gave was, that I needed to “get away”, “clear my head”,  and that miraculously, yes I was looking for a miracle (aren’t we all?). They’d see, well specifically my mother would see how depressed I was and she’d figure it out and finally confront me with it and we’d cry and she’d hold me, hold me with all her love, all her unconditional love and she would wipe away my tears, then hers and quietly tell me that it was alright and that it was going to be alright and that she’d known all along and we’d work through it and in her inimitable logical way of breaking things down, she’d say;

“Well, I think a shopping spree is in order.”

Some imagination I got, huh…

So off to NH I go and just start hanging out and tooting around with her, it was the summer of my 30th year and she taught school, so she had plenty of time for me, her first born. Listen, she’d have had time, plenty of time for any and all three of her kids, regardless. When she said she loved us equally, all the same, she meant it. Not lip service either. Anything to do with her children and her relationship to and with them was on a level that most will never fully comprehend. I know I fall very short of grasping her love for us.

I miss her so so much, my skin hurts…

even now

nine years after

her

Death

So, somewhere toward the end of my two week visit, she and I were up late watching TV, my dad was already in bed and I’m certain fast asleep. When she looked over at me and asked me; “What’s the matter?” I balked, choked even and dismissed it out of hand. She waits a moment and then says; “What is it, you look so sad.” And I’m processing this moment in nano seconds and my synapses are firing at break-neck force and I’m struggling against coming out with it. Finally it’s the moment I’ve been waiting for my whole life, I’m thinking, knowing even, she knows, she must know, she’s my mother the one who has known me the longest. The one who never for a moment, considered giving me up for adoption, the woman who though pregnant out of wedlock in 1958, held her head high, as she continued to attend Sunday services,…with me tucked safely inside her tummy.

So there it is, my moment of reckoning. But why isn’t she saying anything, I mean why hasn’t she even begun to broach the subject, not even a sliver’s worth. Nothing. The ball is obviously in my court. I dig deep and start to cry, but through my tears I ask her; “Remember when you told me when I was a kid, that no matter what it was, no matter how bad I thought it might be, that I could always tell you anything, everything even and you would always love me?” She straightens herself from her half-prone position on the couch and says, “Go ahead, let it out, yes of course you can tell me and yes I will always love you regardless.”

I’m going to do it now, wow this is what it feels like to really say it to someone, not just any someone, but to my mother.

“Mom,…um did you,…I mean,…did you ever suspect, or think even, that there was something,…ah,…oh mom this is really hard.” “It’s O.K.”, she tells me again.

And I stutter and stumble and I just can’t bring it…and I’m still crying and she looks so hurt, so sad for me.

“Well, see ever since I was little, I,…oh God mum, this is so painful. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I’m ashamed, I don’t want you to be ashamed of me,…of who and what I am.” “What is it, come on,  just let it go…” She gently pleads and lights a Carlton 100, I do likewise, though not a Carlton, probably a Camel Filter. I take one good drag, not the one when you first light up, but the one directly after. The good one, the one you’re never quite able to recreate again, till your next one.

(sort of like my drugging, but that’s for another page…clean 15 years!)

“Mom, I have always felt like a girl.”

I can’t believe what just came out of my mouth…

“Ever since I was little, 3, 4 or 5 even…didn’t you ever suspect anything, see anything?”

“No, nothing”, she says.

And then I begin to list all my girl-moments, my litany-my laundry list. 

“Well, remember the time at Nana’s when I came out of the bathroom dressed in her things,…and when you’d take me with you to the Beauty Palor, I was so happy to be there with you, you have no idea, it was my safety zone,…and when the other women would comment on my lashes, or my deep blue eyes and say “Jackie, with those lashes and those Baby Blues, he should have been a girl…” Then there was the incident at White Wing with the Dress-Up Box,  and,…and,…and the dream I had where I was sitting at Nana’s counter and all of the girls were there, you and,…and you were giving me a perm and you put me under the dryer.  Mom, I was so happy during that dream that I never wanted it to end and even when I awoke, I awoke all warm, giggly and content…,how about the time when I pretended to be sick for one whole week, so I could stay home and watch Christine Jorgenson on the Sonya Hamil Show, she did a whole week with her and,…then remember the time I went to the Bedford Mall and bought both Harry Benjamin’s, The Transsexual Phenomenon & Christine Jorgenson’s Biography, I was about 14 and you were waiting for me at Nana’s and I had them in a bag and Nana said, “What did you buy, let me see, let me see,…I love books” (and she did, she was a voracious reader, curious as a cat and the only person I have ever known, who was truly without guile) and I said, “Oh, it’s nothing…just a couple books…” and she playfully snatched the bag from me,  opened it up and there they were, in full view for all to see and you said nothing, but Nana, Nana says, “Christine Jorgenson, I want to read this when you’re done, I’ve always wanted to read her story. She’s the one who used to be a man.” You still didn’t make a comment, then Nana reaches over with her hand and pushes back my hair from my forehead and says, “Let’s see what you’d look like if you were a girl,…you don’t want to be a girl, do you?” You looked at me and my heart sank, but I recovered quite quickly with,…

“Na, it’s just a book, that’s all…” No one made mention of the Benjamin book, not one word. “Remember, mom? You remember that right?”

And she didn’t even have to think about it, she simply said she didn’t remember.

No not that, not really any of it.

So, I reach real deep and relate the following:

“That’s O.K., mom I know that these were some fairly fleeting blinks in the course of my life, and there were countless others, but you’ve got to remember the time when you’d picked me up at Nana’s and we were heading back to our house and I had my Prize Speaking performance that evening (I did Poe’s The Raven, all 16 stanzas and won First Prize/$30.-and a Certificate – Quoth the Raven, Nevermore...) and you looked over at me in the car and told me that I couldn’t go on looking like that, meaning the length of my hair and you told me,…you told me that you were taking me to the Barber Shop to get a regular haircut and I said I didn’t want a regular haircut and we volleyed verbally for a few brief moments more, and I guess you figured you’d attempt reverse psychology on me, or something, so you said, “Fine,…fine, your hair is long enough to be a girls’,…you want to look like a girl, you must with hair that long, huh,…(I sat silently holding on to everything within me, once again to not scream out at any second, with “Yes! Yes! I want to be a girl!”) then if you want to look like,…be a girl, then I’ll take you to the Beauty Salon and you’ll have your hair done, permed, so that it’ll look nice and then we’ll have to take you shopping, we’ve got just enough time to make it to the Mall, we’ll get you pretty under things, shoes and a pretty dress…”

Defeated, I acquiesced and we went to a Barber Shop and I got that haircut, that regular Men’s Haircut.

“But do you know now, that I so very much wanted, no I yearned for you to take me to the Salon, then shopping and all the rest…”, I told her.

 And in a blink I saw the whole scenario play out in my mind’s eye. Then it was over. I just didn’t want you to be angry with me about it,…(tbc-to be continued)

I wanted you to want to help me in my quest, for it to be more than O.K. to revel in my femininity. But you were mad at me and I continued to suppress those,…my female feelings from then on and never even dared get close to revealing them to you, or anyone else for that matter.