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Why it is never over

  • Posted on July 9, 2021 at 7:22 pm

Today is one of those days, the sort you are reminded of, which you would have been reminded of, but for which there is no need. It’s a mark on the calendar. On our calendar it is one of many births, marriages and deaths. This one is a birthday: my daughter is 30 today. I haven’t seen her for ten years now, so we have never known each other as adults. In those years many people have said ‘you never know, she might one day …’. But I don’t think so. Not now.

This isn’t public grieving, or looking for sympathy, just a note of what happens and how you keep finding that something is gone. I saw my marriage going down against all hope as I moved into transition. It wasn’t my decision and perhaps I was naïve to think that love could overcome becoming real. But this I didn’t see, and never had any meaningful conversation to engage with her over what was a deeper divorce. I am not alone, however many good stories I read of families that survive and thrive one member’s transition. I often wished that could have been mine.

So that was then and nothing has changed. But it also means I can’t talk to anyone about her, or ask after her and get any meaningful answers. I hope she is happy; I think she probably is. But hers is a life where I can never be supporting, listening, caring or doing and celebrating any of the things a normal parent does. I find it easier never to mention her because I have nothing to add, and people will always ask what happened, and if that means explaining about the problem of being trans, it adds more uncertainty about how much people know, understand, accept, or are kind.

It is never over.

I still think that her explanation about her father is either that he is dead or that he walked out. I guess I did, but that was because I could not hold myself together still loving someone after 30 years, who was daily moving away out of touch. And my daughter just made sure she was never there, not asking or finding out. You can’t persuade a trans person to ‘be both’, to be a little bit, even, of what they are not. We all needed to face it as it was and failed. And that is where the grief still lies, probably on all sides. And so I am either dead or a deserter, but anyway, happy birthday.

I find it very uncomfortable still, watching films and dramas in which the plot revolves around relationships breaking up in predictable ways, not out of badness, but out of the way the characters are framed. I see it coming and I am squirming: why did the writer make this happen? Why did they have to wreck lives, break families up, destroy loving well-meaning people who were doing their best?

One we have just been watching had a character trying to define love, so they would know when they found it. ‘You make me a better person’ was one way of knowing. So long as it doesn’t lead to dependence and conditionality. It is quite close to my skeptical definition ten years ago of ‘You make me the person I want to be.’ When that happens the other can’t grow, not even into what they could be, and you feel that the other is taking something away from you, if they do grow.

I have grown into more of what I should be, into more of what I am. I don’t know much about my family as was, but I would rather I could help them be better people than have to play dead. I am happy, absolutely and, I think, a better person who they will never know.

Families with trans members need support, and that was conspicuously missing for mine. I hope that one day my daughter will understand just enough to know it didn’t have to be like this.

These books of ours

  • Posted on July 17, 2019 at 11:34 pm
picture from a book of hours

A reflection on family photo albums left behind You are the mother of my children in the photos with them where I am not – and which I do not have. They still ours these days long since the great divide of all things that pressed images between leaves. Those books of hours testaments of devotion of our middle ages, fully illustrated by the faith once shared. And I? I am part of ‘ours’ post-reformation spared the assembly of you and they and those testaments. 2019 © Andie Davidson

Letter

  • Posted on July 17, 2019 at 11:14 pm

Write me a letter I can wait for.
 
Let me find you on the mat
lean you against my teapot
warm your thoughtful words.
 
Send me an envelope to open.
 
Let me slip a blade carefully
in the gap above the tongue
where you licked it closed.
 
Choose a special stamp.
 
First or second is fine, but
so I can spend a moment
on its miniature design.
 
Spread your words over pages.
 
Unfolding them, turning,
uncovering you at leisure,
I will bring you quietly home.
 
We could email, message, text.
 
I could open, read and answer
in a moment in a thought
it could all be said and sudden.
 
But we would be in a crowd.
 
In the clutter of chatter and
comment, appeals, spam – and
I would rush not to lose you.
 
So send me a letter I can wait for.
 
Give me time to expect you,
joy to discover you, patience
with simplicity – and tea.

2018 © Andie Davidson

Going Out: Eastern Germany 2017

  • Posted on January 1, 2018 at 1:22 pm

She doesn’t quite catch my hand
it falls—shatters on the ground.

You never quite know.

Windows down the empty way,
nostalgia with suspicion —
a Trabi sits on the lot, a tiny
sufficient reminder
that trust is fragile, still.

I look down at my hand
the pieces silently explain
why I had danced apart last night
to rock, metal and stones, a
wrong fear of anyone too right.

They pointed at us.
They looked disgusted.
You just didn’t see.
At the fruit blossom fest last year,
—and I recall.

The pieces of my hand reluctantly
rearrange themselves, reoccupy
my glove, find my pocket;
join every love darkened by fear
es tut mir leid.

Yes, and knowing
that this is not how change happens.

 

2017 © Andie Davidson

Of eggs, Easter, and love

  • Posted on April 22, 2017 at 12:14 pm

Easter eggsI shall hold you as an egg
admire the colours of your fragility
for eggs should only be broken
from the inside