I’d rather have been a mother

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Some days come with more pain than others.

Like Father’s Day.

On another Father’s Day, several years ago, I wrote about being The Unfather.

Throughout my post-transition life, I have met situations in which I have had to defend the fact that I wasn’t born female.   I have been told that I cannot ever really understand what it is to be a women because I didn’t grow up being a girl.  And, if the person I’m having the “discussion” with really wants to pour salt in the wound, I’ll be told about the experiences I can never have.

I have interpreted that to mean, “Like menstruating and getting pregnant.”

And that is true.  I would never have been able to get pregnant, would never ever become a mother.  But it was not for lack of wanting.

I do have a daughter.  She was born in 1969.  Our economic situation at the time was such that I was not even able to be present at her birth, but rather was working 10-12 hour days to keep a roof over our heads, such as it was.  I was making $400 a month at Pizza Hut.

I married my daughter’s mother because that’s what people did when their sexual partner became pregnant back where and when I came from.  I’ve had people tell me that doing so proves that I was never “really transsexual”…because the act would come to commit me, in my eyes, to remaining a “father” until my child became an adult and went out on her own.  I didn’t begin transition until 23 years after my daughter was born.

And I spent those entire 23 years wishing I was my daughter’s mother, not her father.  

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

My daughter will be 41 this August.  When I came out, we made a deal:  she would refer to me as her parent…because I would never be her mother…and “father” had become awkward.  My daughter was in a lesbian relationship for approximately two decades.  Relatively recently she met a guy online and she came out again, this time as straight (actually, she rejects labels), broke up with her partner, Julie, and moved to the Syracuse, NY, area, where her boyfriend had taken a new job.

She and Jeff are getting married in Las Vegas on July 10.  Debbie and I will be attending.  So will my ex-wife.  I do hope I won’t be asked to give away the bride.