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Life’s rich tapestry

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).

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.

Elizabeth (2003). Life’s Rich Tapestry. Torque, 3(1), 13-14.