In Praise of TransParency

Gwyn’s frolicking in the neighborhood splash pad with a kindergarten buddy and a new friend, all three wearing pigtails and an obnoxious amount of pink. I sit on the bench with their mothers chatting about teachers which for some reason requires my offhand explanation, “Gwyn has two moms.” My new acquaintance nods. “Chrissy is transgender,” she shares, nodding toward her five-year-old who is now being towed around on a noodle. The conversation careens forward.

What?!

Later, we’ve patted the girls dry and they’re out piling playground sand over their legs. We mothers occupy yet another bench. Because I’ve never known an out transgendered preschooler, I ask, “What’s Chrissy’s story?” And then this extraordinary mother tells me how her little boy always loved girlish things, how all the ECFE mothers wondered about his identity, and then one day when he was four he climbed into her lap and asked, “Mommy, why did God make a mistake?”

God didn’t make a mistake, Chrissy’s mother insisted. The next day she took him to Target to buy a new set of clothes. Chrissy danced through the racks announcing to strangers, “I get to buy dresses! I get to wear skirts!” Chrissy goes to kindergarten next year and already her mother has done a presentation on gender inclusivity for the elementary faculty. Chrissy will enter school as a girl.

I am awed, humbled, and suddenly, fiercely, in love with this mother-daughter pair—because this child knows herself, because her mother listens to her and accepts her, because they’re both flexible enough to revise their ideas about their identities, because they’re fearlessly honest as they enter the ever-widening circles of childhood… I love this mother’s transparency. I love the possibilities for Chrissy’s life in spite of the many hardships I’m sure she’ll endure. I love that Chrissy will know her mother’s love regardless of what else happens.

Who knows why our bodies are the way they are, fleshy and fit, broken and breaking out, male and female and the spectrum between? Who understands the indomitable nature of our souls? Creation unfurls immeasurable variety, and all of it can be transparent to this unexpected, revising love.

–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

*****************

A friend of mine recommended this amazing blog, Transparenthood, in case you’d like to learn more.

Just in case anyone wants to sign up at the eleventh hour, there are still two spaces left in my retreat from June 15-19, 2015:  Alone Together:  Write That Book at the Madeline Island School of the Arts.

And if you’d like to explore revision within your writing, pencil in September 12-16, 2016, for a retreat at the Madeline Island School of the Arts.  More to come!

3 thoughts on “In Praise of TransParency”

  1. I’m reminded of the 1970’s album “Free to Be…You and Me”. The songs and stories in that album helped many girls and boys blossom into the flowers they were meant to be. The story of Chrissy and her mother shows that being “free to be you and me” is much deeper and profound than many of us knew back in the 70’s. And how that freedom can bring forth blossoms more gloriously beautiful than we ever imagined.

  2. Oh I LOVE this! So great! We have a few out transgendered kids at my school…all brave souls…and I think for the most part, their high school lives are pretty OK. They have significant others, and lots of friends, and, for the most part, a whole group of kids and a community who love them for them. It brings hope, doesn’t it?

Leave a Comment