wanted to be called by my birth name. When I said I’d rather not, she told me my name would have
been Samuel had I been a boy and asked how I felt about that.
I’ll never forget the first time she called me Sam, reminding me it was a name that fit all genders.
She’d held me tight while I cried tears of joy and then she’d taken me to the salon for a more
appropriate haircut.
Mom, I’m probably—no, I’m definitely trans.I held my breath, certain that would be the step too
far. Mom said nothing as she sat down at her computer and started researching how to best help a
fourteen-year-old trans child.
I never had to ask for anything. She somehow managed to stay one step ahead of me the entire
way, finding a pediatrician who had a good reputation, making appointments with therapists who
would help us plead my case. If she’d ever mourned the girl that she’d given birth to, it was behind
closed doors.
She worried about me and for me, but all of that was out of love. And yet, I was once again faced
with a moment of ‘will this be too much’ and I was fucked terrified.
“Breathe, Sammy,” Daddy whispered. I was vaguely aware that we were moving. He sat in his
recliner and pulled me into his lap. We gently rocked back and forth until my ragged breaths slowed.
“What was that all about?”
I opened my eyes, praying to every deity I could think of that my parents weren’t hovering over
me, worried out of their minds. Then again, they were used to me so it probably—maybe—hadn’t
fazed them. I let out an audible sigh when I saw my dad on the back deck, pointing at something along
the tree line.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. Your dad seemed to understand what was going on and said he was
going to give us a few minutes,” he explained. I focused on the gentle rasp of his palm against denim
as he rubbed my leg. “I’ve never seen you spin out that hard or that fast. What brought it on?”
One of the many reasons I loved Daddy the way I did was that he found ways to talk about my
anxiety without saying the word out loud. I wasn’t sure why that made a difference, but it did.
“They’re good people,” I said, watching as Dad slid a hand around Mom’s back and kissed the
top of her head. I knew she was worried about me, and I hated that. This weekend was supposed to be
all about showing her how well I was doing living like any other functional adult and wasn’t going to
be jobless and homeless once I graduated. Instead, she was getting a needy ball of frayed nerves.
