Life can throw curve balls at any age.
Yesterday, I received a call regarding an old and recently widowed friend who, a year after wife’s death, is now transgender. I’m pretty accepting of most life choices and lifestyles, but to switch genders at 72 or 73 is kind of …a shock. Especially when this friend has been in your family’s life for 25 years.
But hours to mull over this change and the fact that we are getting together this evening for my birthday and “Megan’s” coming out at our mutual friends’ home, husband Mike and I are coming to grips with the change. The toughest part–I think?
The name change.
It’s an integral part of ones identity and helps shape our relationships. How does Tom become Megan–and how many times will I slip up until the new name and identity is programmed into my psyche? I am worried about saying “he” or “him” when the feminine reference is preferred. I worry about appearing to stare…or comparing what was and is. And what I discover is that I am worrying more about myself than the one who has had the courage to make such a change.
Megan always felt she was a girl, trapped in a male body. Parents took Tom to therapists to “train” the feminine leaning out of him. Tom did well in school, married, had two lovely children, was a very successful businessman, accomplished athlete, and was generally regarded as a somewhat shy and thoughtful man who was married to a very chatty and supportive wife and mother. When Annie died last year, we worried about Tom and attempted to get together socially–to no avail. We assumed he was spending more time with family, who lived out of the area.
In reality, Tom was now liberated after 70 years of denying the identity he always wanted. And we all need to recognize that she has paid his dues. Tom was a successful and dutiful husband, father and provider. Tom and Annie provided Ivy League educations for their sons, were doting grandparents, and the loss of Annie (and his mother a couple of years earlier) freed Megan to emerge. The sons and their wives accepted the change and young grandchildren love their new “Nana.” Other family members aren’t so accepting.
And we worry about our own acceptance of this change–especially our husbands, who have golfed and skied with Tom over the years. Will we be able to joke about Megan unfairly grabbing the trophy in the womens’ golf league? Or her small butt in jeans? Will we be able to keep our senses of humor and friendships intact this evening?
I think we must. I hope we do.
When Mimi and Joe Lemay’s baby was born in 2010, they heard the three words every parent waits to hear: “It’s a girl.” But by age two, their child was saying “I’m a boy.” Mimi hoped this “obsession with being a boy would go away,” but it only grew stronger. Now, in a rare and candid interview, they share in their own words why they decided to let their five-year-old transgender son Jacob transition and live publicly as a boy.NBC’s Kate Snow will have more on Transgender Kids beginning Tuesday night on Nightly News.
Posted by NBC Nightly News on Monday, April 20, 2015
