 |
| Image from Bence Halmosi on UnSplash. |
What if your dream came true and you could have started your life as your mother’s daughter?
How would life really have been if it could have shared that
special mother/daughter bond we can only see from afar.
As I changed my Estradiol patches this morning, I stopped to
think how my mom and I would have gotten along if my gender world had been
different. I know for sure; everything would not have been so rosy if I was
living my dream. I remember vividly being able to sit back and watch mom
expertly apply her makeup before she went out in public. Which her generation
always did. I wonder now when she would have let me start experimenting with
makeup if I was her daughter. I think now, I was wearing makeup before she
would allow me to if I was in the feminine world I so dearly wanted to be in. I
was also fairly sure I was shaving my legs sooner than she would have allowed.
The reason was, she probably never understood having a son
who was really her daughter was all about. If I was her daughter, the pressure
would have been on to conform to her ideas and rules. We were so much alike to
begin with I am sure we would have fought continually. The gender grass always
looked greener from the other side as I grew up. Especially when it came to the
world of fashion. I had always admired the clothes girls around me were able to
wear when I was stuck in the same old clothes.
It was not until much later in life when I started to really
learn of the fashion problems my second and third wives had with their moms,
did I begin to understand what they were going through. For example, my second
wife told me several times about how she snuck out of the house with her skirt
at one length (for parent approval) then when she was out of sight, she rolled
it up to make it a forbidden mini skirt and supposedly mom never found out. On
a more cruel side, my third wife Liz’s mom constantly harassed her about her
weight. I can’t imagine how bad that made her feel. The closest I could come
was if my parents ever berated me over a bad athletic play I made. Which they
never did.
Overall, I wonder if any bond mom and I would have ever come
up with would have been one existing of competition. I am sure my female self
would have been struggling as much as my male self to gain any respect at home.
All the way to the college I was going to attend. Mom was a graduate of an
upscale public university in Ohio as well as being an active alum of one of
their sororities. I am sure she would have pushed me (as her daughter) to
follow in her footsteps, which would have been another problem.
I wonder if at any point in time, my dream of growing up as
my mom’s daughter would have turned into a nightmare. Although, nightmare might
be too strong of a term. Better yet, a struggle would have been better to use because
both genders have their problems if they are over able to arrive at adulthood
and claim the title of women and men. As I said, being a transfeminine person
always seemed to be the best way to exist (for me) in life. I would never need
to worry about being shipped to fight in Vietnam or summoning my courage to ask
a girl out, among other things. On the other hand, I never had the opportunity to
be asked out if I was a girl. Certainly, there was a positive give and take to
both genders, but I was only seeing the good.
Would mom have taught me the basics of makeup? Or would I
have learned it from girlfriends at weekly sleepovers. I am slightly biased,
but I think I would have learned from my female peer group more than mom. Having
never had the chance to learn, I will never know and since mom rejected any
sort of discussion on my transfeminine life, there never will be any way to
find out. She passed years ago.
It wasn’t until years later did, I have the chance to learn
what I missed or didn’t when I grew up male. It finally took a group of women took
me through the process of being a woman. In essence making up for what my mom
missed doing. I inherited her stubbornness to do what was right and her ability
to keep going until she arrived where she wanted to be. It would have been interesting
if she had ever accepted the fact she had a daughter, not a son.
