My Ántonia

So, I mentioned sort of offhand in the last post that my Sweetie is a trans woman. And that's somewhat new, and I hadn't mentioned it before, so I probably owe an explainer.

Earlier this year, I asked if she might be trans -- not really expecting the answer to be yes, but sensing that something was wrong or off, and looking for some answer, no matter how apparently out of left field.

She did not, in fact, answer "yes." She answered "WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT???!!!!" about 17 times over the next several days.

And then after some time had passed, we had a Very Serious Talk.

Interlude: my Sweetie is an intelligent, eloquent, articulate, clear and concise speaker. Until it comes to saying things that might hurt someone's feelings. Behold the conversation we had in the tent last week.
Á: Is that your red light?
Me: What? No, I have my white light on. Hang on. I don't see a red light. Do you still see it? 
Á: I mean... I meant... Are you using your red light on your headlamp?
Me: No. I'm using the white one.
Á: I know. It's really bright.
Me: OOOHHH! You want me to use the red light? Yeah, I got you. (The white light was too bright and had been bothering her, but she thought "Could you switch to your red light, please?" was too demanding and rude.)


So this is how we ended up having a conversation where we walked away, her thinking she had told me she was a trans woman and me thinking she had told me she didn't want to compete with other men anymore because toxic masculinity is bad. (It is possible I didn't want to hear her message.)

It took one more serious conversation for me to get it.

Most of the rest of this writing is going to focus on how good everything is and how all is well between us and what a not-big-deal it was, ultimately. But for the sake of honesty, it felt like a pretty big fucking deal for a couple days, and I lost some sleep over it. The scariest thought I remember having is, "Well, if anything would lead us to divorce, this would do it."

Also, this realization/revelation was causing HER a lot of anxiety and pain, so I sort of demanded that she go see a therapist to talk some of it through.

She did, and I don't think that was easy. And that sort of got the whole ball rolling -- she's seen medical doctors, etc. since, and is well on her path through transition. Although transition makes it sound like there's some end point where she'll be a woman in a way she is not now. That's not right. She's a woman already. But she will undergo some physical transformation and legal changes, and those may help the world see her as she is already.

Anyway, if you're wondering, YES OF COURSE it was an adjustment. Things I took for granted are changing. One day the dark hair on her arms was gone (shaved off). It seems like nothing, but I remember being really surprised by it.

But here come some of the positives: her therapy, which she has continued, has really helped her deal with her anxiety. I've even heard her coaching Azadeh on what to do with intrusive thoughts. She's more patient, more relaxed, more at ease in social settings. She smiles more (like, a LOT more). She even cuddles more.

She has shared her new name at work and with our friends and family. Although I was trepidatious at times, we have had overwhelmingly positive feedback.

Even the kids are pretty well adjusted to it. Instead of Papa, she's now Poppy. Lochlan saw us arrive at swim lessons and happily announced, "Poppy! My Poppy's here! I have two mommies!" Azadeh is even more consistent than we are sometimes at using the correct pronouns (although this was more noticeable even a few weeks ago -- she and I rarely slip anymore).

One of the phone calls she made was to her oldest sister (I sat in the room for moral support). To fill some time in what I think was a surprised silence, she started telling a long story about Leroy Jenkins.* But she also told her sister that she'd first realized she was a woman in 2016.

I heard that needle-scratching sound in my head. I thought my question -- the one to which she answered, "WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT???" -- was the catalyst, and that she hadn't realized or thought about it before. Later on, I asked her about it. No, the 2016 date was correct. But she went online and read about how incredibly many marriages are ended by the revelation, and had more or less decided to just be unhappy and hide it from me (and the world) forever. But, she went on, she had gotten to a pretty low place. She didn't think she could continue to live as a man, hiding her real self, but she also didn't think she could live as a woman. The implication was pretty clear to me, and I'm glad we were able to get past that.

Things won't always be easy. One of my biggest fears is that she will face violence or harassment in public, and that will probably never subside much. There are still things to learn to navigate, too. Last night I was reading some old blog posts with pictures of her with a shaved head and captioned "Zadie with her Daddy." When those Facebook memories come up, can I still share them, or will they make her feel bad?

But you know what? We are keeping the lines of communication open, having really hard and honest talks sometimes, and when I want to know that, I'll ask her.

A funny idea popped into my head today. A nerdy band I like called They Might Be Giants came out with a song many years ago called "Why Does The Sun Shine? (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas.)" It's upbeat and catchy. Then, after the science was updated, they wrote a jazzy new song, "Why Does the Sun Really Shine?" "The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma. The sun's not simply made out of gas... Forget that song: we got it wrong."

In some ways, our recent changes feel like that. The sun is vitally important to us, right? No life on earth without it. This science is a groundbreaking revelation! The very sun is not what we thought it was! But also, the day before they figured it out, the sun rose and set, and the day after, it did, too.
Understanding that someone isn't what you (and they) mistakenly thought doesn't mean they changed.  My Sweetie, my Ántonia, is still the generous, loving, supportive soul who has made me laugh until I lose my breath more than anyone else on earth. She's still the person who believes in me more than I do. She's still the loving parent of our two kids. I am glad to know more about her. I am wildly glad she is happier than ever before. I'm grateful we get to grow into the future together, and that I can know and love her real self.


*Essentially, Leeroy Jenkins is the story of someone who rushes headlong into something in a foolhardy way. I think she was expressing to her sister that she wasn't rushing into anything.

Big family camping trip 2018!

Well, we missed it in 2017, but we managed to get together with the Oregon family for a big camp-stravaganza in the redwoods this week.

In case you missed it, we love going up to Oregon, but it is a VERY long drive to drag the kids on, pretty expensive, and involves a whole lot of finding restaurants that can accommodate 18 people and which everyone likes.

Camping is about half the drive, less than half the cost, and we just cook the food. It's great!

We drove up last Saturday, and everyone was already there (minus some of our nieces). We'd managed to get two sites right across from each other. The ones I'd found were right near the bathroom and ours backed up to a little ravine, which meant we didn't have quite as many neighboring sites as we sometimes do. Also, it was next to the path down to the river.

I won't bore you with every detail, but I'll share highlights. My older nephew brought Cards Against Humanity, so one of the nights he was there, we played that and laughed a LOT. Another night we played Exploding Kittens, which was a lot of fun until Azadeh cheated at the last second. (We're still working on sportsmanship.)

I had brought some wood carving tools, since Azadeh had recently expressed an interest in learning, and my brother-in-law Alan is a terrific talent at it. He spent hours and hours with her, teaching her the right way of doing things, and telling her stories while they worked side by side. She carved a lovely canoe, and I'm hoping she'll finish it here at home.

I love both my sisters-in-laws' cooking, so it was great fun to eat Maryam's spaghetti and Michelle's loobia polo and Persian egg dish. I also adore Maryam's pancakes -- I try to recreate them sometimes, but to no avail.

Maryam, her husband Alan, and her son Jacob had to leave Tuesday, which was sad, because I know we'd have had more fun with them if they could have stayed. But they went out of their way to make time after just returning from another long trip.

One of my favorite camping activities is just sitting around the fire at night telling stories. My brother in law is a great storyteller and has a vast catalog of favorites. My wife(*) just laughs until she cries!

The kids go half-wild: they get filthy, climb giant redwood stumps**... heck, Lochlan stripped off half his clothes on day 1 and went barefoot some of the rest of the time! But they also eat and sleep well. It's about the only time Azadeh can be reliably counted on to sleep all night long, and perhaps even sleep in in the morning. And with so many family members around, someone's always got an eye on them, so even on the brink of a ravine, I really wasn't too worried. Where's Lochlan? With Katie. Oh, ok.

We had big pots of coffee every morning, made fires even when we didn't need them, made breakfasts sort of communally (my brother in law is my morning homie -- we both get up and sneak around making coffee and starting fires), one of us making eggs or potatoes while the other fixes up bacon or toast.

Antonia, my wife, loves to play in the river, so she hightailed it down there on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday until she got really pretty sunburnt, and gave it a rest for the remainder of the trip. They take inner tubes down, or re-route the water by digging tunnels through the rocks or climbing up the steep bank and jumping in. I like to float down the (shallow) rapid, then let the eddy take me right back up. The water isn't ideal -- it's full of algae and frogspawn, and it's never very deep -- but it's a great way to spend a couple hours.

I made a couple side trips -- mostly to the closest town for ice, but also to Garberville to show my brothers-in-law and go to the toy store, to "Confusion Hill" to delight the kids, and to Miranda for ice cream (like, really good ice cream). We also checked out the visitors center and took one drive to Rockefeller Loop Trail to do a little adventure that earned us patches.

We did have one pretty serious bummer on Thursday. Samwise Gamgee, beloved dog of our Oregon family, passed away. He was 14, arthritic, and blind in one eye, so it was probably his time, but it was still pretty devastating. On the bright side, he went pretty quickly without much suffering in a beautiful place, a few days after getting a swim in the river (Katie carried him all the way there).

Now, I will be circumspect here: Katie, having checked on her phone, indicated that we may have broken approximately four laws. But let it suffice that we thought Sam would appreciate being laid to rest in the beautiful place we had all been enjoying. And one of our trips to Garberville involved the purchase of a shovel.

That night, we heard the freakiest sound. Sort of a whining/barking OH OH OH OH-OOOOH! Then more. One was close -- in the campground, certainly.
Sweetie and I looked at each other in the darkness from our sleeping bags and thought the same thing: coyotes. And that maybe they had found something fresh to scavenge. I have a vivid imagination, and I had CONCERNS.

Then in the morning, we heard more than usual crow activity, and I remembered that they, too, are scavengers. I was just... well, I was hoping that no one wanted to go say a last goodbye to Sam, lest there be a grisly discovery.

BUT! Thanks again to Katie and her ever-present phone, we found out it was the call of a "barred owl."

It had been a sad afternoon and a tense evening, but Friday we were back on track and enjoyed the day together.

Today we all packed up, said our reluctant and loving and tearful goodbyes (mostly Lochlan was tearful -- he thought he wouldn't see cousin Kellen again!), and headed home.

* Oh, hi! I told everyone I know on the Facebook, but I suppose I haven't mentioned here on Blogger that my partner of 15 years, frequently referred to here as "Sweetie," fairly recently discovered that she is a woman. She is transitioning, and it's all going pretty well, and we're still fine and in love and the kids are largely used to it (Lochlan proudly announced "I have two mommies" at swim class last week), and it probably deserves its own post, but there you have it. Sorry if it snuck up on you!

** Lochlan, upon learning that his sister had climbed a VERY large stump when she first visited the campground, insisted he was going up, too. And despite discouragement (she was 5 at the time, and he is 3), he did! He needed a few boosts and foot placements, but he sure enough got his ass up a HUGE redwood stump. Of course, he had to be emergency-rescued down by his cousin, but still -- a victory is a victory!