Saving Smiles

“Did anyone really know their child? Your child was a little stranger, constantly changing, disappearing and reintroducing himself to you. New personality traits could appear overnight.” *Big Little Lies*


I heard this tonight and immediately realized I was nodding my head, as if to indicate to someone that I agreed. I was alone, for no one to see.

My mother mentioned to me recently that she noticed a framed photo in her house of Courtney and Chloe when they were little. She said, "I never noticed it before - how Chloe looked in that picture. Sort of lost. Subdued. Wilting. The more I thought about it, the more I realized this is how Chloe looked in a lot of her photos. Sort of lost."

(In this photo, it is Chloe on the right)



Chloe was first a female. Then, Chloe came out as a lesbian. Then Chloe became Chris. These were some of the most obvious changes, but there were so many more.

When Chloe was small, born the first born of identical twins (on the left in this black/white photo), to me, she and Courtney were very much alike, not just in appearance, but in personality - both happy, interactive, filled with curiosity, ambition and life. She and her twin, Courtney, were very close, competitive in a positive way (I thought), identical in so many ways. And yet, when I look back on their lives now, as they grew from toddlers to adolescences to teenagers ... inside of me I have a strong hindsight awareness of how often Chloe changed in her life, how there were times when she was young that I, now, recognize how unsettled she might have been or was; an uneasy feeling I have that surrounds her in some of her life, a feeling that makes my heart sink. Going through those many years with both girls, I didn't recognize subtle sadness's, hidden fears, feelings of maybe being lost. They both seemed happy, always, yet, there are pictures that capture Chloe in such a way that I have to question what her thoughts were, where is her personality in those pictures, was there things I missed?

"How do you tell them apart?" people would often ask. I'd say, "Courtney has a rounder head to Chloe's oval, and Chloe has more hair, and the shape of their eyes are slightly different." But then I'd always add, "I just know them. I can tell them apart easily. To me they are different." And this was true, but I was also the one that found great joy in their being identical, dressed them alike for many years and rejoiced, constantly, their twin-ship. (Chloe is the one sitting up in this photo)

No one but Chris can know if or how much his being a twin influenced his body/identity dysphoria. I have to believe it might have played a part. I, also, might have played a part (likely so). It wasn't until college that Chris realized his feelings about himself were feelings others shared about their selves and that the answer to his uneasiness/unhappiness with his image, his body, his identity, his gender was to change it. 

Chloe is on the right in this photo. The one with the serious face. The one with her arms crossed. I always saw her expression as sort of defiant in this picture, while she was never a defiant child. Maybe she often refused to smile because she couldn't always call on a smile easily. That's true of some people. I don't know, but I wish I did. I hope it was just that she was more serious than Courtney (which was and is still mostly the case). I hope it's not that she was sad.

While you can not see Chloe's eyes in this photo from when she was about 18 or 19, I think she looks very much the same as she did in the first photo I posted (in the angel outfit). She doesn't so much look sad, as she looks lost, and as I write this it brings tears to my eyes and makes my heart ache. I've looked at this photo many times over the years and always loved it - her hair, her sunglasses, all the bracelets she wore on her wrist. Until today, I really never realized that in this one photo I might have captured her wandering.

When Chloe was in high school she drew this self portrait of herself behind bars. I don't know exactly what the portrait was meant to portray, but if there was ever a photo that depicts how I think Chloe might have viewed her life in her late teen years and then early college years, this would be it. And, again, there is no smile. 

People often say that Chris has the most beautiful, contagious and brilliant smile, and it's true. And it's a smile that fills a room, now. A smile glowing from his whole body. A smile that shines in his eyes.

Maybe ... all Chloe was doing her whole life was saving her smiles for when she was truly happy. Maybe Chloe was saving her smiles for Chris ...