A Letter to a Thousand Other Mothers

Dear Mom,

I cannot imagine writing you this letter. I certainly cannot imagine sending it. Is it a kindness to you, to never tell you? That's what I tell myself.

It's not that I think you're fragile. I've butted heads with you—you have a hard head. But glass is also hard, and still it shatters. And yet, you're a person who came to a new country, who left everything you knew to start a new life. You saved lives in a language that wasn't your first. You raised two kids. You retired and traveled to every continent including Antarctica. You are not fragile.

But it is hard to tell you. Because you're my mom. I could tell a thousand other mothers I don't know, I just don't know how to tell you.

And would you even want to know?

It's been so many years since it happened. It's not a burden on me. I don't want it to become a burden on you.

______

(I wonder if it's ever happened to you. But that seems impossible somehow.)

______

It seems like all of a sudden, people are talking about sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape. On the interwebs, people are coming out right and left and talking about their experiences—who, when, where, and the post-trauma effects that remained with them afterwards. It's like a tidal wave. The rage is palpable. You can feel the years, decades, centuries of holding it in.

I don't feel rage though.

I don't know what I feel.

I was a woman (sort of) for thirty years, and now I'm a man, and so the landscape is much more complicated from where I stand. Rage feels important, necessary even, but also blinding, and since I am both a man and a woman the gift of blindness is not afforded to me.

______

These last few years, I think I've turned a corner with you and Dad. I think, finally, I'm getting the hang of being an adult around you both. You always said I took things too literally. Maybe I did. I've learned to translate you better—what is it you mean underneath what you say? And, weirdly, the less I need you to be proud of me, the more proud of me you are.

But some things are still hard, like talking about sex. I still don't know if it's ever appropriate to talk about sex in front of you, or how to do it. As kids, if the subject ever came up, you used to make a disgusted face, like sex was a dirty thing only disgusting people did. I knew you must have had sex twice, but it made me wonder if you'd ever had sex more than that, and if you'd enjoyed it at all.

Maybe you were just trying to frighten me away from having sex before marriage, but the only thing it frightened me away from was talking about it with you.

Even still.

Even still, there are certain words that I say really fast when you're around—words like sex, gay, trans—and then pretend I didn't say them. But now you've started to say the words: You and Liz talk about her work and you both say words like "sex education" and "abortion" and "rape" and you don't look disgusted at all. You look like an adult having a conversation with another adult. I remember going to the bathroom once—I was only gone for five minutes!—and I came back to find you both telling each other penis jokes.

(If you're fully an adult when you can tell a penis joke to your parents, then maybe I'm not an adult after all.)

______

I've got a joke. Once upon a time, a girl—who doesn't yet know she's a boy—goes backpacking for a month and is raped on a beach in the wee hours...