Surviving Gracefully

My family and I may not lead or live our lives the way some people would deem as "Christian", but I don't know many other families that touch so many lives the way my family does, in so many positive, generous and loving ways. We are judged by people every single day; I am judged constantly - it only makes us stronger in our convictions, stronger as a family whose only goal is to live honestly, be true to others and live peaceful and happy lives. We are nowhere near perfect, but we are strong together.

Someone said the other day that it's strange how all of my kids and our family are so touchy and hug everyone so openly. I told them I wasn't necessarily raised that way, but that is how raised my children and I am proud they are lovable and loved because they are so giving.

Many people strive to be closer to God; I believe God keeps me right by His side; I always have. I believe that much about our lives is merely a test of surviving gracefully. I believe that the God I believe in would not have designed a world where life was meant to be easy - where is the test in that? Many "Christians" would suggest that the goal in life is to live on a straight path and this is maybe why so many resist and create controversy. I think the test of surviving gracefully is being willing to often veer from the straight path, because it's often on those winding roads where you find the extraordinary people, experiences and answers that enrich your life. It's often easier to alienate, more difficult to include or involve yourself in people or things you don't understand or make you uncomfortable. I don't need to go to church to be close to God or have anyone tell me how to live my life. I believe I'm living the life God expected of me. I believe I'm one of the ones He was counting on to choose a winding path, as He knew I'd follow or lead my children there.

My one daughter is a lesbian. My son is transgender. My other son is a bit of a rebel. My youngest daughter is still finding herself, but spent some time learning and experiencing Islam. Some of my kids have tattoos, gauges, piercings, dreads. Each of these children have been "worrisome" to some in my family and "worrisome" to many in the world, but I see and know each of these children to be an example of human beings surviving gracefully. Each of these children know and practice tolerance. Each of these children are loving, kind, generous, intelligent, driven, defiant, strong, beautiful. Each of these children are strong-willed, outgoing, reliant and resilient. Each of these children demand to be known as "extraordinary". I believe ALL people are extraordinary, but there are certainly those, given the opportunity, that will and can change your life. Unfortunately, many of the most extraordinary people live away from a straight path and can only be found if you go there ...

I become offended by anyone who tries to define my children's lives or my life as anything other than divine. This is not to suggest that our lives are easy or ideal or perfect, just to suggest that I believe God veers from the straight path to walk beside me, my children, my family and everyone on the winding roads, as well. Maybe He spends most of His time there. It isn't necessarily those living a "safe" life that need Him most. It isn't those standing in judgement He condones. Maybe He dwells on the winding paths most because that's where He views His creation at it's finest.

I know what some people think, "Maybe if you'd raised your children differently, they'd be normal." I've had people blame me for how my kids turned out. It's true - my children are a product of their environment, a reflection of their father and I in many ways, and, apparently, in the raising of our children we taught them to embrace diversity, and for that I am proud. I will totally take the blame for how my children have turned out, for I think they are navigating a difficult world like four eagles powerfully in flight.

I once had a discussion with someone about interracial relationships - back when that was such a "controversy" (not that it still isn't). I said, "The true test, I believe, that God would offer in creating so many different races, would not be how to successfully and peacefully keep them apart, but how to unite them." This is just logical. But do I believe God meant for races to mix? Yes. Uniting an entire world would be an extraordinary accomplishment of the human race. Keeping races divided isn't and hasn't been easy, either, but the word "divide" (definition: separated or separate into parts) , its self, defines a process of alienation. Would God create a world where He imagined His people divided? If so, why not just create such a profound world to begin with? Why offer Man choice? Some people would say that Man's choice should be the way God made us - divided races from the beginning; separate. Maybe that is so, but I believe He could have just as easily made all of Man the same race from the beginning and then, therefore, there would have been no problem, but by creating different races, He presented potential conflict, presented choice, presented the challenge.

I once had the belief that God intended men to be with women because we were created that way (Adam and Eve, and all. Most of the animal species, etc.). I now believe that it doesn't matter who anyone loves. Because ... like the races, I believe the test on humanity is not conformity to some assumed ideal, but tolerance and acceptance of the extraordinary, and so it would be logical that the most difficult journey is the true test, as "ordinary" is most often comfortable and/or accepted. If He had truly intended one kind of love or sexual experience, He would not have offered the gift of choice. I do not believe human lives are or were meant to be lived without challenge, choice or controversy. I believe the test is to survive peacefully and gracefully and, unfortunately, that comes down to one person's definition of right and wrong from another's, and then somehow meeting in the middle with some compromise.

All I can do in my life is depend on my own definition of right or wrong. All I can do is take responsibility of my own choices. Some choices I definitely got wrong and tremendously regret. How I have raised my children is not one of them ...

Lines

I was reminded this last weekend of a story the twins often find great joy in telling. They claim that when they were both around five-years-old that they were drawing pictures of dogs. One drew her feet of the dog with rounded paws and the other drew her dog's paws pointy. They say I quickly drew attention to Courtney's dog, saying, "That is not how a dog's feet look," and then, after much discussion about who was right or wrong, I gathered them up, took them outside to inspect our dog's feet. And then ... we came back inside and I made Courtney re-draw her dog's pointy feet to more accurately aesthetic paws.

I attest that this episode with my five-year-old twins was nothing more than a teaching moment, while they recount it as a humorous, yet traumatic experience - haha! They also adamantly claim that I would never allow them to draw stick people.

Both went on to become amazing artists, while Courtney was the one whose art was more true-to-life and Chris's was more abstract. If you look at these dogs, while they are pretty similar and not necessarily Picasso-like, Courtney might should have been the more abstract artist and Chris the more true-to-life, yet, they switched rolls in life. Maybe it was this one lesson from their mother that caused each of them to defy how their lines should be drawn.

I'm okay with that. It was probably at this very time when I lost control of them. They were always very easy children, yet they never allowed me to forget they each had their own minds, their own beliefs, their own voice and their own perceptions of life.

Beyond the point where I attempted to teach my kids "norms", I eventually encouraged and supported each of them to venture, explore and even live outside the lines. I've been a mother that has ventured inside and outside of societal boundaries my entire life. I have children that mostly defy many "norms". 

Being the mother to 4 rather "extreme" children, I have learned that living outside the lines or watching them valiantly redefining lines, has lead to journeys on sometimes frightening, yet extraordinary paths. Being the mother to a trans child has been Picasso-like. I'm not always sure of what I'm seeing or feeling, but once I chose to be included on this path, I was enveloped by the beauty, taken on an extraordinary journey.

Looking back on that lesson I tried to teach the twins when they were five-years-old, I now know I was wrong. One of Picasso's most famous dog drawings shows not pointy or round feet, but somewhere in between. The lesson I maybe should have taught was ... there's no right or wrong, there's only lines, lines that will most definitely be yours to draw, because it will be those lines that define your life. Fortunately, they learned this lesson with or without me ...

Come Closer

I was out recently and a man came up to me and asked what I was drinking. I told him, he wandered off and came back to me with a glass of wine. I thanked him and then turned to see his girlfriend waving me over to their table. I got up and moved. When I sat down, the woman said to me, "I've been watching you and I thought you were pretty, but I didn't think your face was pretty. Now that you're near me, I see you are pretty."

This really happened. I just smiled and thanked her, but was at a loss for any other words (what do you say to something like that?), but I guess I can find some comfort that I wasn't even more repulsive to this woman up close LOL.

I mention this story because people have often told me, about Chris's appearance, "If I didn't already know that he was trans, I would have never known." They also, constantly, comment on how handsome he is. I've had this same experience when meeting some of Chris's trans friends - some, I didn't even realize they were trans until well after I met them, some I knew were trans, but if I hadn't known, I would have never guessed.

There have been many occasions when I've been with Chris (and his trans friends) at a pool or lake, around strangers and, until he takes off his shirt, people may notice him, but not necessarily stare. It's when they see his (chest) scars that I've seen stares, some begin to wonder and become curious. I've never experienced any of these strangers being rude or openly judgmental, while they will whisper to each other - they simply stare enough that I become aware they are looking. There were times, early on, when this happened and I felt the urge to "defend" Chris, say something. I never acted on that urge, as I think I wanted Chris to be comfortable, have fun, to not have his identity questioned, not be forced to address strangers and their curiosity (or worse). If ever someone were to have said something mean or hateful, I would certainly have spoken up. Now, when I see people staring at Chris (and his friends), I feel more pride than fear for them.

I said recently, "You have to be a little brave or a little crazy to dress the way I do." I dress in a way that expresses my personality, a way that I'm comfortable, a way that, in many cases draws attention (like what happened with this lady and her boyfriend), and it's not necessarily intentional attention, while I am not opposed to occasionally triggering a bit of controversy. Mostly, I just dress the way I like because I have earned the right to do that. When it comes to Chris's appearance, I think he is simply trying to fit in without notice, without controversy, without condemnation. Having to have hidden his chest for so many years prior to transitioning, it is freeing for him to now experience and live his life where he can shed his shirt, feel the sun on his skin - he's earned the right to stand out or to fit in. 

Where Chris is concerned, I don't fear for him anymore when people see his scars, I celebrate that his scars are part of the process that brought him this far toward achieving happiness. I simply want to say to people who might stare, now ... "Come closer ... so you can see more clearly how beautiful he is."

It Hurts to Become

Chris has a tattoo on his upper chest that reads "It Hurts to Become". It's a line from a poem one of his favorite poets, Andrea Gibson, wrote: 

I Sing The Body Electric; Especially When My Power Is Out

This is my body
I have weather veins
They’re especially sensitive to dust storms and hurricanes
When I’m nervous my teeth chatter like a wheelbarrow collecting rain
I am rusty when I talk- it is the storm in me

The doctor said some day I might not be able to walk
It’s in my blood like the iron
My mother is as tough as nails, she held herself together
The day she could no longer hold my niece she said
“Our kneecaps are our prayer beds
Everyone can walk farther on their kneecaps than they can on their feet”

This is my heartbeat
Like yours, it is a hatchet
It can build a house, or tear one down
My mouth is a fire escape
The words coming out don’t care that they are naked
There is something burning in here
When it burns, I hold my own shell to my ear
Listen for the parade when I was seven
The man who played the bagpipes wore a skirt
He was from Scotland- I wanted to move there
Wanted my spine to be the spine of an unpublished book
My fate, the first and last page

The day my ribcage became monkey bars
For a girl hanging on my every word
They said “you are not allowed to love her”
Tried to take me by the throat
And teach me I was not a boy
I had to unlearn their prison speak
Refuse to make wishes on the star on the sheriff’s chest
I started wishes on the stars in the sky instead

I said to the the sun
“Tell me about the big bang”
The sun said
“it hurts to become”

I carry that hurt on the tip of my tongue
And whisper bless your heart every chance I get
So my family tree can be sure I have not left
You do not have to leave to arrive
I am learning this slowly

So sometimes when I look in the mirror
My eyes look like the holes in the shoe of the shoe shine man
My hands are busy on the wrong things
Some days, I call my arms wings
While my head is in the clouds

It will take me a few more years to learn
Flying is not pushing away the ground
Safety is not always safe
You can find one on every gun
I am aiming to do better

This is my body
My exhaustion pipe will never pass inspection
And still my lungs know how to breathe
Like a burning map
Everytime I get lost behind the curtain of her hair
You can find me by the window
Following my past to a trail of blood
In the snow

The night I opened my veins
The doctor who stitched me up asked me if I did it for attention
For the record, if you have ever done anything for attention,
This poem is attention
Title it with your name
It will scour the city bridge every night
You stand kicking at your shadow
Staring at the river
It does not want to find your body
Doing anything but loving what it loves
So love what you love

Say this is my body
It is no ones but mine
This is my nervous system
My wanting blood
My half tamed addictions
My tongue, tied up like a ball of Christmas lights
If you put a star on the top of my tree,
Make sure it’s a star that fell
Make sure it hit bottom like a tambourine
Cause all these words are stories

For the staircase to the top of my lungs
Where I sing what hurts
And the echo comes back
Bless your heart
Bless your body
Bless your holy kneecaps
They are so smart
You are so full of rain
There is so much growing
Hallelujah to your weather veins
Hallelujah to the ache
To the pull
To the fall
To the pain
Hallelujah To the grace
And the body
and every cell of us all

Andrea Gibson

Recently, Chris was somewhere and a lady asked him what his tattoo meant and he simply said, "It means what it says. It means, it hurts to become." The woman shook her head and said, "It doesn't hurt to become anything."

This is sadly an example of "privilege", maybe, or ignorance or a person that has only lived an entirely blessed and charmed life, because, if there is one thing I have learned on this journey with Chris, it is that there are not many people in this life who have not experienced the trials and pain of becoming something or becoming someone worthwhile or merely through a course of pure survival. And these words do not necessarily describe the process as horrific or maddening or impossible or even painful, I don't think. I think these words simply describe that most rewards require work, most journeys will encounter obstacles, most people grow and strive to be their best selves, but rarely without tests, transitions, transformations or sacrifice of some sort. 

One of the other things I have learned is ... be very careful when you judge any other person, because you never know how hard it is or has been or will be for them to become ...

Her Name Was Chloe

I was talking tonight to my son about his birth.  He wanted to know details and so I told him his story.  And then, he and I got to talking about the birth of the twins, his older siblings, his sisters for so many years.  When we described them at birth and things about them in their early years, he and I both wavered between calling Chris by his birth name, Chloe, calling that child of our memories by her birth name, the name we knew her as in those times, the person she was ... Chloe ... or calling her Chris.  Back then, she was Chloe, yet, he and I, both, replaced her name with Chris several times ... "When Chloe, I mean Chris, was born ..."  We did this mindlessly.  We didn't acknowledge that the other was doing it, but I caught the times we each wavered.

You can't have this sort of discussion, have these moments when you find yourself switching a person's name, and not ponder on the oddness of it, ponder on the correctness or incorrectness of it, ponder on the truth of it, even ponder some on the frustration of it.

Her name was Chloe, and referring to her when she was a baby, or even up through High School, as Chloe, seems correct, and, yet, out of respect, out of habit, out of relearning ... we both renamed her, for Chris, while talking about her.

There was a time through this journey where I would not have hesitated to call her Chloe, not given it a thought - even been adamant about it.  There was a time when my greatest fear of all was losing her, leaving her behind, never to be known, spoken of, seen, felt, alive again.  It is something I feared and cried about.  It is something I fought, internally and externally, not to happen.  I learned, eventually, through time, through multitudes of thought, through hours of prayer and months of experience and years of living that Chloe was never going away ... she was simply changing.  I've written in this blog about those days I turmoiled over this issue and subsequent days when the situation, and I, somehow reconciled fears and sadness into acceptance and happiness.  Somehow, through giving her the freedom to be who she needed to be, I learned to change her name and leave the name Chloe behind.

Tonight, I tell myself to know that I am right calling that baby Chloe, because Chris has said, himself, that it was she, that little girl, that toddler, that teenager that carried him for so many years, with abundant strength and persevering conviction to get him to where he needed to be.  Without her, I know, he would not be the amazing person he is today.

But ... while my son and I spoke of Chloe as a baby, of details of her birth and young life, I spoke easily, without sadness, without fear, without agitation, and, yet, as I sit here, several hours later and write, I have had moments of longing.  Not sadness, really - not regret that I will never know her as a young woman or mother, as a girl, as I once fraught over.  The longing, I believe, is the reality that I've let her go.  In so many ways, she was another person with a future that will never be known - not her future.  And, so, it is sort of the feeling of death, in a way.  Yet ... from her, Chris was born.  And I wouldn't choose to lose Chris for anything in the world.

If I could have had both, Chloe and Chris?  Would I choose that?  Or, knowing what I know now, given the choice, would I have allowed his life to evolve as it has, to where he is now?

I believe Chris would not be who he is now, the person who has experienced struggling, pain, trauma, sadness, lessons, insight, empathy, compassion, trust, love, brilliance, fortitude, kindness, fear, loneliness, determination, ambition, humility, integrity, friendship, companionship, direction, bravery ... at the level and abundance he has, if he had known another path in his life.  And, because he has gone through so much and is surviving and thriving because of and in spite of this difficult journey, I would choose Chris and allowed his life to evolve.  It sounds like it would be "easier", maybe, to choose to have them both, selfishly believing that having them both would fulfill something in me, allow me to not feel sacrifice, maybe.  But ... I have not sacrificed.  And, Chris's journey has not been only his own.  I've been there.  I've lived it.  Much of what he has experienced and learned, I have as well.  And he's taught me many things.  He's taught thousands of people many things.  He was, for whatever divine reason, meant to travel this difficult path and take me and so many others on this journey with him.  I would choose Chris's journey.



And, fortunately, I was never given that choice, and ... I didn't have to choose, after all.  I'm one of the lucky in this life to have known and loved them both.  Her name was Chloe, and because of her I now have Chris ...

Chris's Scream

On August 18, 2015, I started this blog as a way to document the journey I am taking with my transgender son, Chris Rhodes.  That was over two years ago.  That was back near the beginning of this journey when things were far different than they are now.  That was back when I couldn't see what the future would hold - how things would evolve - how I could ever imagine getting from that place to this place without a thousand more tears or a tangle of fears that controlled so many of my thoughts.  Back when I couldn't imagine getting from that place to this place lugging around and cradling so many of my shattered dreams.

I've walked thousands of steps since those early days.  Chris has walked many steps in front of me, many steps without me. We've come together and we've also been torn apart.  We battled, at times, and other times we surrendered to each other.  Through it all, I never let Chris out of my sight, I never ran and I have stayed close, even if, sometimes, my eyes were closed or I refused to listen.  Above and beyond this, Chris never let me go, never pushed me away, even when it probably would have made his life much easier.  And ... he never allowed me to control his dream.

I've often thought, over the years, since having children, that raising them into the world is not just a test toward ensuring their survival, but also a test toward defining ours as parents, as human beings.  A child will most often survive in spite of their parents.  They will ultimately define their own worth.  They will pave their own path.  They will defiantly survive.  Regardless.

My children have tested me on so many levels and survived, brilliantly, in spite of me.  You think you know who you are and WHAT you believe, but nothing and no one will test you and your ideas more than your own child, because just about the time you believe you've created that mirror image of yourself you have tediously tried years to replicate ... they look at you with a face that is not like you at all, counter you with ideas far more powerful, even more convincing to you than your own.  They stand in front of you strong, convicted, different.  As a parent, you spend hours and days and years trying to get your children to conform to your rules, your agendas, your beliefs, because you have only your own life and experiences to guide them by and believe if they follow you they will survive.  But ... a parent should also try to impress on their children to rock conformity, to refuse it, to defy it, to fly when others are walking, to scream when silence is deafening, to stray when lines are formed toward incompetence or boredom or rigid ideas that offer no extraordinary future, no extraordinary life.

Like my other three children, Chris has kept me close, but always makes sure I know that he is going to scream when the silence is deafening, he is always going to fly even if others are walking, he is always going to stray when lines formed are leading toward incompetence, boredom or offer ideas that do not lead him, or anyone, toward an extraordinary future, an extraordinary life.  He's kept me close and embraced those parts of me that compliment his ideas and place in this world, and because he veered far from the path I once believed his life should have taken, he's helped me see that I succeeded in helping him know when and how to take possession of his life.  He's also helped me redefine my own identity.  I am not just his mother or the woman that birthed a baby girl I named Chloe, as I once clung to.  I am now the person that has come to understand that a person's identity is ONLY linked to others or other things when THEY allow it - otherwise, it is personal, always, and it is never negotiable.  And it most certainly should not be driven by others ideas or dreams.

I no longer worry about Chris the way I did a few years ago, and not because I somehow succeeded in helping him to survive on this journey he is on, or survive, at all, really.  I no longer worry because, through this journey, through Chris (and my other kids) I came to appreciate and love the idea that he is not a reflection of me, but his own complete and utter identity.  And that identity is strong now because of the changes he's making in his life, in his appearance, in the vision he is creating, discovering, offering to the world.

Chris is one of my very best friends and favorite people.  Partly, I guess it's because he's my child and I'm his mother, but beyond that ... there are few people on this Earth I'd rather spend time with, listen to, hear laugh.  I honestly believe, now, that if Chris had gone on in his life as Chloe because he was afraid or did not know how to change this thing about himself that felt so wrong, that was wrong, I honestly believe the silence from such sadness would be deafening, the path would be leading him toward the wrong life, the wrong un-extraordinary life.  I know that now.  I'm proud I taught this child to scream ...

It's Was a Beginning ...

I did it.  I traveled to Plano, Texas with Chris for his top surgery.

It wasn't so hard.

It was not the end of anything as I might have thought a year ago.  Actually, it was a beginning.

I was calm.

At ease.

It was meant to be, somehow.

A "meant to be" beyond anything I had ever reasoned, but a "meant to be" for Chris and, therefore, a "meant to be" for me.

He's changing his life in spite of me.  In spite of everybody who tried to define who they think he is suppose to be.  He is changing his life and I ...

was there

to witness

my child

changing and taking complete

control

of his life.

Somewhere in all of this ...

I give myself credit

For helping give this child courage ...

To change his life

from uncertainty

from sadness

to happiness ...

Somewhere in all of this I have to believe

I am a part

of what makes this child

amazing