Who my child was and will be
But that wasn’t the case, as I discovered in November of 2019. While chatting on FaceTime one day, Nat mentioned that he was visiting a nearby organization to help the LGBTQ community explore the feminine side of his personality. At first, I thought it was about identity tourism, a kind of immersion into alternative selves. Then he explained that he wanted to change completely, to become a woman.
This came as a shock. To me, he was a man, an effeminate, lovable person with a Y chromosome and a visible Adam’s apple. Why did he want to become a woman? Nat tried to explain, and at first his desire seemed intertwined with his periodic bouts of depression, which were deeper and darker than I had realized. He told me that when he was lost in their depths, he felt completely empty. “I don’t feel like I have any reason to live,” he said.
This was a painful exchange. We often think of depression as an occupational hazard for creative people, and Nat, a poet, visual artist, translator and DJ, certainly fits that demographic. But “depression” is also a beautiful word for depression.
Of course, depression, for many people on the verge of transformation, can serve as a red flag. Friends and family often advise against making such an important decision in the midst of emotional turmoil, without realizing that a deep sense of incompatibility is what fuels the turmoil in the first place. I’ve been down this path myself, and I urged Nat to address the depression first.
“I understand you are responding to a deep urge,” she wrote him in a long email. “This deep, consistent drive should not be ignored. But what does it tell you? I don’t see how a hormone regimen, smoother skin, or redistribution of body fat can alleviate the kind of anxiety you’ve been telling me about.”
I was fighting it. This is clear. In my email, I cast the impulse to change his body as naive literalism—as if the body were merely an artificial container for the interesting person inside.
However, Nat has already begun to say goodbye to his old body. During those weeks he was suffering from pneumonia. This means spending long days at home, full of fatigue and shallow breathing. He ate “The Sopranos”, drank bone broth, and showered frequently. He told me that in the bathroom he was examining his body in the water, and realized he was leaving it behind. He told me that he felt kind of sad. But that didn’t change his mind, it was just the cost of change and getting rid of the old self.
I felt myself tiptoeing into our next few exchanges. I didn’t want to push Nat away. I also didn’t want him to turn into a woman. It was that simple, that is, not simple at all.
For weeks, she felt an impending loss: the precious reality of having a son was about to be taken away. I did not relate to dynastic issues. However, I believe there is something raw, a product of the primitive mind, that makes the father identify with the son. You See Yourself in this beloved other being. I was afraid of losing it.
Fear entered my dreams. One night, I was a lonely woman in an apartment, a stalker waiting outside the door. Nat and I, as women, were both: she was weak in transition, and I was powerless to stop her. I told Nat none of that. I could grieve the son I was losing while preparing myself to have a daughter.
At the same time, I chose the crisis management method that most book lovers prefer: books. I read Jean Morris’ book.puzzle(1974), marveling at the hyper-masculine roles Morris occupied before transitioning—soldier, Everest climber, political journalist, father. She had transitioned so long ago that a vaginoplasty was performed at an obscure clinic in Casablanca. And yet, it could have been written yesterday.
I also read Rachel E. Gross’s book “Mysterious vagina(2022), with its images of gynecological surgeon Marcy Powers creating, with almost sculptural skill, a vagina attentive to pleasure. It left me wondering how long before the joint would become indistinguishable from the “normal,” and whether Nat, despite his reluctance, would one day transform himself in this way, too.