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by Amy Emm
It was the pill bottles that really got me. I was looking for floss in the medicine cabinet when the reality of what my mother called my father’s “situation” hit me right between the eyes.
I turned the little orange bottles around and read the labels. They had words on them I couldn’t even pronounce. All I knew is that they spelled trouble. This was for real, and I couldn’t ignore it any longer. My aloofness and tough-guy exterior were a hard act to keep up. I had to admit it: I was worried.
About us, our family, our future, for god’s sake—and most of all, what my friends would think. It was simply something you didn’t talk about. I could just imagine myself at the lunch table: “Hey, guess what, everyone, my dad’s got boobs!” I was sure that dead silence would surround my laughing friends, settle onto the table in between the beef tips and milk cartons. Sometimes I could laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing, and sometimes I could throw the coffee table right through the front window.
Unfortunately, my dad just happened to be walking by the bathroom at the same time I was doing my pharmaceutical inventory.
“Hey, Nate. I wanted to talk to you. Do you have a minute?” He was standing right in the doorway of the tiny bathroom, blocking my escape route. “You haven’t been around much lately.”
I quickly shut the cabinet door and kept quiet. If I said anything, things were going to get ugly, and quick. You bet I hadn’t been around much. I found more and more excuses to come home late from school—extra-credit projects, tutoring the ninth graders in math, dusting the library shelves, you name it. The way things were going, I was going to be named Volunteer of the Year at my high school.
“Are you having a hard time with this?” He’d left me a wide opening, one of his classic businessman tactics. I couldn’t help it. When you’re offered a field goal, you kick hard for those goal posts.
“Well, yeah, Dad, now that you mention it,” I said. “I think you’ve just about lost your mind.” I waited for his reaction.
“Hey, buddy, I know this is going to be hard on you and Mom. I’m mixed up about it too,” he said. “We’re going to need to stick together.”
I threw the floss I was crushing in my hands into the sink, and it bounced and swirled around the bowl. It landed on the floor. I could have shot that thing to the moon right then.
“But why, Dad? Couldn’t you just buy a sports car like every other middle-aged guy? Why are you doing this?”
“Your mom gets her hair cut, right? You had braces, right? This is the same thing. You do things to make yourself better—to make yourself feel better,” he corrected himself.
“How? How is this the same thing? How could you do this to us? To me? To Mom?” I leaned both hands onto the pale yellow countertop, its fake glitter swirls mocking me with their disinterest. I couldn’t breathe. I felt as if someone had died—I felt that bad. As if a heaviness had crept onto my chest and was holding onto my lungs. Was that what it felt like to have someone you love die? I was paralyzed. I was going to be stuck holding onto the sink. I didn’t want to ever let it go.
“I’m just becoming a better me. It’s who I am. It’s who I’m most comfortable being, who I’ve always wanted to be,” he said.
“But how do you know? You could be making a huge mistake!”
“I just know.” He looked at the floss I had thrown on the floor. “I’m still your father, someone to talk to, someone to love you. I’m still me.”
“Still you? But you won’t be you—you’ll be wearing lipstick! You’ll have long hair! You’ll look different and act different.” I was exhausted. This wasn’t a conversation I should be having with my father. My brain hiccupped with the absurdity of the whole thing, from the fact that we were having this conversation in the bathroom to the fact that soon I would have two moms. Or would I?
“I may look different, but I’m still the same person inside. Nothing can change that. Please work with me on this.”
Oh, yeah, “work with him.” Who did he think I was, someone on a board of directors, sitting around in a meeting room with pie charts on the wall and cold coffee in front of me? Things like this couldn’t be hammered out, a neat decision typed up in the meeting minutes. I could picture the office memo, dated 4-14-06: “Your son, Nate, is A-OK with you becoming a woman! Cake in the breakroom at 3:30.” It just wasn’t that easy.
I wanted to listen, to understand. But this was beyond comprehending. It was as if my entire universe had turned inside out. I wanted to talk more, but the fight had gone out of me. Being extremely confused was as tiring as running a marathon.
“Can I just go now, Dad?” I wanted to get out of that lemon yellow bathroom more than anything. I was glad that I had finally broken my silence, but I couldn’t talk about it any more right then.
“OK, if you promise me one thing,” he said. “That we can talk again soon. I want us to talk to each other and maybe to a counselor about this, OK? It’s not something we can handle on our own.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, Dad.” I did feel oddly relieved. I don’t know why. The situation hadn’t changed, and I still felt as if my internal organs were all mixed up. But I felt a calm I hadn’t felt in a long time. I was actually glad that he suggested a counselor. I was desperate enough to talk to someone. Since I couldn’t talk to my friends, I knew this was my only choice, short of running away on the next boxcar train to Mexico.
He moved away from the door, and I reached out to turn off the light. He held out his hand as I brushed past. I stopped, turned around, and slowly pressed my hand into his.
“I’m still me,” he said.
“You’re still you. I know, Dad,” I said. We just had to find out who we were—together.
Amy Emm grew up and stayed in snowy Syracuse, New York, where she tries to keep warm during the six months of winter. She recently left her job as a chemist to concentrate on writing for children. Today she writes in between baking cookies, gardening, practicing yoga, and hanging out with her husband, Chris. She is the central/western upstate New York regional advisor for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Amy is very happy to contribute her work to Rainbow Rumpus.
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