This is how my days go. The boys always remember to say "please." Manners are important to their Ma and me. I am Papa in my house and my days are punctuated with little boys yelling for me from the kitchen or crawling into my lap to tell me a story. I am a domestic man teaching my sons to follow suit. They love to clean and put clothes into the washer, they think I'm amazing when I steam-vac the floors. I keep asking myself if I am teaching them all the things they need to know as boys to survive out there when it is time. When fatherhood came, it hit like a volcano sitting dormant. I wasn't expecting to fall in love with that first view of the monitor. It wasn't easy. I wasn't ready. I had just figured out how to be this man and now I was taking on a whole new role.
This is the moment we cheer. My 3-year-olds are potty-trained and every time someone makes it to the potty there is an instant celebration. This re.inds me of the medical steps it took to achieve this body, how my partner was my cheerleader. When she calls me her beautiful man the trumpets sound in my chest. Before her, I never liked myself enough to know what it meant to be loved. It sounds clichéd, I know, but I believe it to be true.
My sons make me evaluate over and over the label of "man," make me redefine what it is to be beautiful. When I think about achievements like walking, teething, and potty-training, I remember the way we clapped and said, "Good job!" I keep reminding myself this kind of praise shouldn't end.
When I was a kid there was never a "Good job!" rolling off the lips of my parents. I worked hard to please and usually my best was far from good enough for them. My father was usually absent and my real father had died a long time ago. I had a brother who couldn't do the things with me that I wanted to do so I depended on the bikers, farmers, and construction workers whom I grew up around. My masculinity comes from men in the fields, beers around bonfires, and chopping wood. Where I live now, there are no fields or bonfires and I have no need for chopped wood. From these men I learned that being a man was a broken back and drinking. Most of them were in marriages they hated and with kids like me who had no promise of making it past gravel roads. They took solace in those cold beers, in those brown bottles. The night air always smelled thick with whiskey. What I learned from the men around me was that, as a girl, none of those men were gonna love me, and that I may end up with a woman who wouldn't appreciate me. These were their stories and I didn't want them to be mine. What stands out in all of that, though, is the level of commitment these guys had.
My real father worked double-shifts at the shipyard and my adoptive father jumped off trains. When he wasn't jumping off trains, we baked: he secretly dreamed of being a pastry chef. The boys and I bake at least once a week and we cook together often. I think of my dad in these times and I wonder if he would appreciate the man I've become. These days I think of him as the guy who bought me. I wonder if ar some point my kids will believe me to be the guy who bought the other half of their DNA.
There is not always happiness in fatherhood. There are broken bones and scraped knees and the flu; there is bedtime and time-outs and tantrums. Before these things, we had the NICU (neo-natal intensive care unit). I wondered if the nurse could tell I was a different kind of man. After tunes and bilirubin lights for jaundice, after apnea and incubators, I had the moments I had dreamed about: my boys and I, bare chest to bare chest. Other transmen called me stupid for wanting kids, for staying in a long-term relationship. They told me I would never really be a father, that other men would not look me in the eye when I was out with my boys. As men, we are taught to be providers and nothing more. I am a provider. When they say "provider," they mean "bringin' home the bacon," making enough money to take care of the wife and children. The idea that I don't provide for my family is laughable to any stay-at-home parent. I am the maid, cook, preschool teacher. I am the launderer, handyman, nurse... I am what they would consider to be a "renaissance man" if anyone actually valued all of my skills.
I want to tell them, "You should be," but I know better. Right now they are scared of the dark, or being up too high in a play structure. Nobody told me I should be afraid. I came into this world chest first and that's the way I've approached it ever since. I ran into transition like a kid runs toward an ice cream truck. I didn't know that as a transman I would become an individual some people fear.
I am not a big man, that's not what makes me scary. It's my skin. Before 9/11, I was a hoodlum. After 9/11, I was a terrorist. Either way, I'm some sort of pain in the ass. I became a stain in the sea of white men in my own community, I am a token. Beforr I stuck that needle to flesh, before I cut off parts of my body, I was just a girl nobody noticed. I was oversized clothes and dirty sneakers blending into the vinyl of a bus seat. Now I am still dirty sneakers but blending is a thing of the past. Cops follow me home, pull me over for something to do. Airport security makes me physically ill for a week before my trip. Somehow my presence makes the world stop running smoothly, throws a wrench in someone's otherwise perfect day. When I'm doing yard work, I'm the hired help. When I'm out with my kids, I'm the nanny. When my partner and I are out at community functions, I'd like to remind folks ghat we have a right to be there. It's an age-old battle of proving queerness: I would like to be invited to queer parenting groups where I don't have to discuss my genitals or our sperm donor... who is just that: a sperm donor. We don't know him.
We don't play guns in my house. There is no play-fighting or wrestling. When people question my intentions, they tell me these things are just harmless games, but war is real, guns are real, death happens every day. If the world suspects me of being a terrorist, I wonder how they will view my children. They are, after all, mixed blood though one is blonde-haired with blue eyes and his skin is pale, while the other is olive-complexioned with hazel eyes and sandy hair. I worry for the day they defend their ethnicity; I worry for the day they start defending us as their parents. I want to arm them with words and witty retorts, not fists. So instead we play dress up, make music, color. We swing from the monkey bars, ride bikes, splash in the tub. I want to keep these times in boxes in the shelf as a reminder of masculinity to my sons.
I'm often asked if I'm more aware as a father because I am a transman. People think as a former woman I am a better parent., they believe the way I nurture these bodya has something to do with being raised a girl. If I could introduce you to my mothers, you would think twice about the idea that all women are soft. I learned gentleness from my fathers. My quick short answer into those questions is usually "I don't think so." I wasn't much of a girl. When you grow up in a small town, out in the sticks where work needs to be done, gender isn't much of an excuse for not getting dirty. In fact, most of my growing up was genderless until the moments when a dress was laid out on my bed, or when puberty hit and they didn't sell any sort of masculine bras or tampons for those hitting female puberty.
There are days I don't like my body, days I don't want to think about how my kids might one day grow to hate me. I worry that even though I am their Papa they will want to know their donor. I wake up in sweats worrying my wife will die and I will lose the best thing we have ever done, that someone will take my kids, question my paternity. I worry that in one foul motion because of this body, because of this medical problem, because of this thing I consider a disorder, I will lose everything. I want to say to my boys, "Be scared, you should be," but I have hope that they will hold their own against a world that promises to scare them. ]
jacobvanloon
romaincrisis
discoholicmusic
jbbartram-illu
2087
kaledo-art
kianamaiart
origamiaround
stormborns
