Ross had been bugging me for a week, “When are you going to be finished with your online teaching certification?”
I was completing my training in my brief “time off” between the spring 2020 semester, which had been upended by Covid-19, and a summer session, in which I would be teaching two courses, – online – one course which I hadn’t taught since the 1990s. I had to complete the provisional certification before I could teach online in the summer, so I couldn’t stop, nor did I have the “spoons” for anything beyond what was directly in front of me, which at this point in time was a computer screen.
My sister was also calling me multiple times a day from the Memory Care Center. Her dementia was worsening, and she was in a panic. Why wasn’t the family visiting her? Why had her daughter abandoned her? Why wouldn’t I come and rescue her? A daily barrage of whys? And whens? I was barely hanging on to my emotional and psychological center.
“When are you going to finish your training?” Ross asked again while I was preparing potatoes for dinner. I held up my knife, annoyed, and said “What do you want? Tell me now.”
Ross was trembling, terror darting from his lovely blue eyes. “I’m not asking for a divorce. And I didn’t cheat on you.” His earnestness, his pleading only made me angry.
I gripped the knife. My heart raced. I didn’t think I could handle another thing; I felt as if I would break at any moment. Would I become like the women on the crime reality show Snapped? Would I end up on the kitchen floor in the fetal position finally lost to trauma and betrayal? What was Ross going to tell me and how was I going to react?
“I want to see a therapist,” he said.
Not bad. No cause for alarm. Yet. “Why?” I asked.
“I think I’m a woman,” he said. He looked at me for something, anything.
I wasn’t surprised, but I was shocked that she finally figured herself out. I cut another slice of potato. Her news didn’t send me into a rage, nor did it knock me to the floor in a panic. Instead, I said something insensitive and stupid. Not Snapped material, but certainly worthy of an apology. I said, “Why the fuck would anyone want to be a woman?”
Later, after an awkward dinner, we talked. What would the neighbors think? How do we break this to our friends and family? How much money was all of this going to take? What sort of woman would she become? Would she decide she needs to start fresh? Would I still be attracted to her? Should we move or stay put? Who could we reach out to for advice? We would need counseling, but with whom?
She confessed that she first suspected she was trans when she felt lumps on her chest (which we later discovered were caused by mono). At the time, before the mononucleosis diagnosis, she was afraid she might have cancer and she had thought, “I guess I am going to die a man.” At this moment, in a state of heightened fear, she knew that she could no longer hide herself from herself or from me or from the greater world.
She said she couldn’t play “hide and seek” any longer.
I had suspected as much for years. I had even told her, before we were married, that I’d still love him even if he were, in fact, her. Telling him this only enraged him, which told me all I needed to know.
So, when she finally came out to me, and to herself, I wasn’t surprised. I was relieved. But mostly, I desperately wanted, I needed, time to pause, think, and breathe.
Non 