Pride Week Guest Post from Jamie Johnson: My Son’s Story
Sometime into my son, Kip’s, engagement to Paige they felt the need to share his secret with her parents. It was the right thing to do. They didn’t want her parents to find out he was trans from someone else and feel hurt; they might think that Paige and Kip didn’t trust them enough to tell them.
So they scheduled a visit on a night when her brother, the only sibling still living at home, would be out at football practice.
Transitions Studios, November 2011.
Kip was a wreck that night. I thanked heaven he had a strong heart, because he had wound himself tighter than a rope on a ship’s anchor. I was a bit tense myself. Sometimes it surprises me, how my feelings are still so connected to my children’s. It doesn’t seem to go away just because they grow into adults.
Early that evening the phone rang. I looked at the call display: Kip’s number. I hadn’t expected a call for another hour or two. Crap!I thought. What’s going on?!
Taking a deep breath, I picked up the receiver. “Hello.”
“They cancelled football practice.” Not even a hello, just an exasperated whisper.
“Oh, honey, what are you going to do?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back, and then at fast-forward speed, said, “but we have to do it tonight.” He took a deep breath. “I’m ready… and I can’t go through this again.” He’d been having the conversation in his head all week and the stress of waiting for the time to come had almost brought him to the point of rushing over there and blurting it out.
“What if you go for a drive…or out for coffee?” I offered.
“Maybe. We’ll figure something out. I gotta go.”
“Well, good luck, honey,” I said sympathetically. I hung up the phone shaking my head. Murphy’s law. If something could go wrong for the poor kid, it would.
The next time the phone rang, I looked at the number and my heart seized. Paige’s parents. A flash of fear stopped me dead. Letting the answering machine take the call was a pretty attractive option at that moment. But I couldn’t do it. Whatever they had to say, I’d face it.
“Hello”
“Hi, Jamie. Kip just told us his story.” It was Paige’s mom.
“Hi, Suzanne,” I said, trying to prepare myself for anything. “Yes, I knew they planned to tell you tonight.”
Her voice came back in a determined, fluent tone. “I can’t tell you how strongly I feel about this.”
I took a deep breath and braced myself. Please God, please make them accept him. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what she meant or what I should say. So I just waited.
Jamie at a book fair.
“I’ve been trying to get Kip to go back to school for a long time. Now, I’m going to push even harder. The strength it must haven taken to go through what he’s been through, the whole transition process… well, now I know he can do it! I won’t give up now!”
I think I might have laughed at that point. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it sure wasn’t that! Kip had completed two college programs, but Rachel wanted him to go further.
Later that night, when Kip told me the story of telling his future parents-in-law, I learned that they’d shared his secret in very close quarters. Paige and Kip had squirreled her parents away to the back end of the house, into their pantry, as far away from ear-shot as possible. Kip said he felt like the walls were closing in on him, like he was in a closet. The room barely held the four of them.
When I imagined this, I could picture the sweat dripping down Kip’s forehead, him trying to wipe it away casually with his future in-laws only inches away, and then the confused look on his face if Suzanne had reacted the same way with him. I had to smile. What had seemed a scary, foreboding conversation hadn’t needed to be fear-inducing at all. It’s another good example that you just never know how people are going to react when faced with diversity.
Now, a couple of years later, when Kip and Paige go to visit her parents, they bring with them our bright eyed five-month-old grand-daughter. There is no awkwardness in the relationship. Nothing’s changed. Kip’s mother-in-law says all she ever wanted was for her daughter to feel happy and loved, and she has always felt that Kip is the right person to do that.
To me, the best part is that Kip and Paige can take their beautiful baby to visit her Granny and Grampa with an open heart and no feelings of regret.
Jamie Johnson.
Jamie Johnson is an award-winning author who enjoys sharing the growth she experienced when raising her two very interesting children. Her memoir, Secret Selves, explores the most interesting years in their home: the years when her daughter became her son, and his younger brother shared his body with five alternate personalities. Jamie’s work has been published in several anthologies, magazines and newspapers. You can visit her website and blog at www.secretselves.net. She works alongside her husband in their unique antique/gift shop.
