Seven years ago I met the man who would
become my husband and the father of my two
children.
Until we met I’d never thought of
getting married, nor had I found a person I
dared take the plunge of parenthood with. But I
realised before long that this man was special,
that a background of adversity had both
toughened and softened him, that resilience,
determination and resourcefulness, an intense
sense of responsibility and wealth of
experiences suited him for the challenges we
would face together.
By the way my husband has transsexualism. To
be perfectly honest I forget this a lot of the
time, I rarely think about it now, in the same
way that I rarely stop to notice his hazel eyes
anymore (though he has very nice eyes).
So immersed are we in the daily blur most of
the time, so distracted are we by our two
energetic sons, transsexualism is a long way
down on the list of issues to ponder as a
couple. I guess it wasn’t always that way
though.
In the early stages of hormone therapy when
we first met, my husband was nervous about
telling me, afraid that I would run away very
fast and not look back. But he was not
apologetic, not ashamed.
He’s a very deliberate, strong willed
man, and while he hoped for my acceptance, he
didn’t need my approval or permission to
proceed with rehabilitation.
He knew himself, he had chosen his path and
only hoped I might travel along with him.
We’ve become more educated since then
about transsexualism, we’ve explored the
medical facts and possibilities, the social and
legal ramifications, we’ve found better
language to express ourselves, but my husband
has not wavered from the very first conversation
we ever had about transsexualism.
He was very sincere and extremely clear. He
told me about a little boy with a girl’s
name who was misunderstood, lonely and
unhappy.
He reached into a drawer and showed me
“This is testosterone” and gave me
magazine articles to read. It seemed simple and
obvious to me that he was a man living with a
fairly rare medical condition. The only question
was, did I want my own life affected by this
condition?
The short answer is that my admiration
outweighed my concerns and the rest, as they
say, is history!
I said above that we’ve discovered
better language to discuss transsexualism, but
you know mostly we use words like: man, husband,
father, brother, uncle, nephew, son-in-law.
I hear the word “Daddy” a thousand
times a day, but I never take that one for
granted. Our boys are beautiful.
The baby has emerged from the misery of
reflux with a cheeky gap toothed grin and
apparently the intention of making up for lost
time – he goes everywhere in a very big
hurry.
Our three year old is bright and curious. We
made it through the long days of “Why? Why?
Why?”, now he wants to know where
everything comes from including babies,
aeroplanes and all manner of animals, vegetables
and minerals in between.
He also wants to know where do things go:
food after you eat it? poo after you flush
it???
We agreed long ago to be open and honest with
our children, without overloading their little
brains. Their many questions give rise to lots
of discussions, some more difficult or delicate
than others, but I would rather explain
transsexualism to a child than many other
concepts (war, drought, famine, etc, etc,
etc).
Our older child is beginning to understand
that Daddy was a little bit different from most
other little boys when he was born. I hope he is
also beginning to understand that we are all
different from each other in many, many ways and
that difference is a good thing.
All part of life’s rich tapestry.
