Real-World Fitness Milestones

I suspect that some people are tired of hearing about this, but you probably remember that I was very sick with debilitating fatigue for about two years. Even when I began to recover, I felt that I had lost so much of my baseline fitness and wellness that I would never be the same again--I thought I was permanently diminished.

About a year ago, doing a lot of walking at the FGC Summer Gathering, I realized that I had improved enough that I had a baseline of fitness to work with--that I could walk enough to do it regularly, with the goal of being able to do it more, go farther, go faster.

So I joined the Y and I started working out, lifting weights and walking on the treadmill.

I loved my workouts, and I could see, in the gym, how I was improving. My weights crept up little by little, the time I spent on the treadmill increased, my walking pace got faster, I adjusted the incline so that the imaginary hills I was climbing got just a little bit steeper.

But what I really loved was the moments in real life when I realized how much stronger and more fit I was:

The day I caught myself trotting up a flight of stairs, instead of sighing at the bottom, holding onto the handrail, and going up a slow and determined one step at a time.

The day I took some kids to the Renaissance Festival and we criss-crossed the grounds over and over in a very inefficient pattern, and I didn't even think about it, and at the end of the day realized I had never had to sit down to rest.

The day I got all the way up to the third floor at Tiny Tornado's preschool and realized I'd forgotten the snack for the class in my car. I ran down to the parking lot, got the snack, zipped back up to the third floor, and was on my way back to the car again before I realized that I had done that without thinking, when only a few months earlier it would have seemed insurmountable.

The day Raider and I were moving a dresser, and as we picked it up, he said, "Should we take the drawers out first?" I said, "No, it's not very heavy," and he laughed and said, "It's not very heavy for you."

And right now: I have done heavy yard work on four of the last five days. Yesterday I was out there for five hours, moving mulch, climbing up and down the ladder, running the power washer.

I was a little stiff last night.

A little stiff.

That's all.

This morning I feel fine. I expect that I'll head out there today to try to get the last of the mulch where it's supposed to go, and then I plan to power-wash the driveway. (Because I love that power-washer. After I finish the driveway, I'll be standing out there, looking around, thinking, "What else can I blast with a powerful spray of pressurized water?")

Soon enough I'll get used to this and stop having to talk about it all the time. But I may still talk about it more than often than is quite proper, because our cultural narrative says you're not supposed to be able to be fat, fit, healthy, and strong at the same time, and I am. So even when this stops being a ressurection story, a new-lease-on-life story, I think it is still worth telling.

My hero and role model, Ragen Chastain, would say that no one is obligated to meet anyone else's notions of health, or beauty. But, with her, I think it is important to remind people, as often as possible, that it is possible to be fat, fit, and healthy all at the same time; that, as she says, the only thing a person's size tells you is how big they are, not what they eat, how much they eat, whether they have diabetes (or will get diabetes), and not how far they walk in a day.

The summer gathering is coming up again, the first week of July. Perhaps that anniversary would be a good time to retire the "I felt so bad, but now I feel so good" story. It's old news now.

But I will still have a story to tell.

Power Washer, Mi Amore

Finally got going with my dad's power washer today. Some thoughts:

I love power-washing so much that I am going to start listing my hobbies and interests like this: "Education, homeschooling, amigurumi, reading, writing, biking, kayaking, power-washing, Sacred Harp."

I used to wonder why anyone would ever wash a house. I mean, by definition a house is outside, right? Where the dirt is? We don't go around washing tree trunks, do we? I mean, seriously, is the queen expecting to come eat her crumpets off my exterior walls?

Today, I learned that for a house with vinyl siding, a good power-washing is pretty much the equivalent of a fresh coat of paint. The house is glowing! I figure it's probably worth $6,000 more than it was this morning, just from being so fresh-faced.

Also, I defy any woman--anyone, really--to get a good two-handed grip on a power washer and start playing it over the siding without immediately feeling like Ellen Ripley with a flamethrower.



That little fantasy was enough to keep me happily power-washing for most of the morning.

I liked the power washer so much that when I had finished doing the garage, I moved right on to the kayaks. Here the kids helped, even the Tiny Tornado, who squeezed the trigger while I helped hold the hose. Everyone loves the power washer.

The kayaks look like new, even the crappy uncomfortable double kayak that we only keep around "in case friends want to go with us sometime," and which we haven't paddled in 7 or 8 years, and which actually had moss growing on it.

It was fun being out in this perfect sunny not-too-hot day working with my dad and the kids. At one point, my dad was finishing up the new breezeway screens, I was power-washing, and the kids were moving mulch all by themselves. They got quite a bit done, too.

My dad and I could never get it together, temperamentally, to work together when I was a kid. Not that he didn't try; he was as happy to show me how to hammer a nail and change the oil in a car as he was to show my brother. But my perfectionism and insecurity made it very hard for me when I didn't get things right away, and it took me another 30-some-odd years to really get that just because my dad sounds gruff and is frowning doesn't mean he's actually mad or thinks I'm incompetent.

So it was pretty neat to be out there today, bustling around in each other's vicinity, getting stuff done. Our yard and house are looking good, though don't you find that one project begets another? Having power-washed, I now wonder if we shouldn't try to find the time and energy to paint the garage doors and shutters this summer.

I can't wait to use the breezeway. It hasn't been useable for its intended purpose since we moved in and our big old dogs went right out through the screens when they wanted to get to the back yard. I'm getting chairs and a table, and I'm going to invite people to brunch. I'm getting a chaise longue so comfy I can take a nap in it. Or a hammock! A hammock would be good.

It's Like a Game We're Playing

The Tiny Tornado is obviously still working through the end of preschool. The other day we had this conversation:

TT, whiny: Mom, do I have to go to preschool tomorrow?

Me: No, honey. You're all done with preschool.

TT, bursting into tears: You mean I'll never see Miss Kathleen again?

At home, despite my recent humorous take on the challenges, we're actually doing pretty well. He spends big chunks of his day playing video games, riding bikes, or sword-fighting with his big brothers. He does errands with me. He has taken up an old hobby, luring the dogs into his bedroom with treats and then dressing them up in t-shirts and shorts. He roots around in the recycling bin for supplies to make houses for his stuffed animals. He sets up obstacle courses in the living room. Overall, he does a pretty good job of keeping busy and actually out of trouble.

My biggest challenge with him is one I still have with Word Boy: the endless chatter, the endless questions. I'm thinking about setting a limit on how many times per day each kid can say, "Mom...?" We'll see how that goes.

The other challenge is this whole boy thing. He stands firm in his gender identify for the moment. "I'm still a boy," were his first words to Raider when he woke up the other morning, and he asked me, "Am I still a boy if I go in there?" when I made as if to take him into the women's room with me. (I assured him that many boys go into the women's room with their moms until they are 5 or even 6.)

For the most part, I am carrying this lightly, as he seems to be. That's made easier because it doesn't quite feel real to me. It feels like a game we're playing. Maybe that's partly because, except for the pronouns, nothing has changed. The Tiny Tornado didn't need new underwear, a new haircut, new clothes, or new toys to be a boy. Just a new pronoun.

It also doesn't feel real because, really, what are the odds? Our lives are full of female-to-male transgendered people. Sure, some of them we've met because, at some point, we started hanging out in that community. But a number of people in our lives have transitioned since we met them--including three people who were still living as women when I dated them, and one close friend of Raider's. Most of these folks are still important parts of our lives.

And then we go adopt some random baby, and he turns out to be gender-nonconforming? *rolls eyes* You wouldn't believe it if I put it in my novel.

The other day, Raider and I got to go out to lunch together while all three kids were at a movie with a friend. We talked about this, of course. I said, "I can't help wondering if in some subtle way we made this happen."

Raider laughed. "You've met the Tiny Tornado, of course?"

I'm not a big fan of "things were meant to be." I love being the Tiny Tornado's mom and can't imagine life without him--but I assume I'd feel the same way about the baby girl whose mom decided to parent her a few months before we brought TT home, or whatever baby we might have adopted had the Tiny Tornado's placement with us fallen through.

But I have often thought that the TT is lucky to have us. He's a challenging kid (though, really, what kids aren't? Maybe your kids. Not mine. Not most of the kids I know, even the "easiest" ones). And we've done a good job of rolling with those challenges. We've always been good at appreciating our kids' qualities even when those very qualities were what made the days hard sometimes--and that's certainly true of the Tiny Tornado, whose drive and self-assurance and competence are a wonder to behold, even as you're excusing yourself to scream into a pillow, "Why the hell can't he ever just do what I ask him to do one time, just one time, without arguing! Argh!"

"Isn't he a wonder?" we say to each other. "Now can you watch him for awhile so I can take a xanax and a nap?"

People often say to me, "I admire the Tiny Tornado so much. But I'm glad you're his mom and not me." I always find "better you than me" statements a little judgmental, but at the same time, I am also glad I'm his mom and not someone else. Because I'm doing a good job with him. And I can imagine that many people might not.

My point was going to be, though, that on top of all that, he's genderqueer. In all the randomness of adoption--the agency we chose; K's decision to place her baby for adoption; her decision to let the agency choose the baby's placement just when we were the family who'd been waiting the longest, rather than choosing herself from all the waiting families--in all of that, this little female-bodied boy ended up with us.

Without false modesty, I am going to suggest that we are probably one of the ten American families who are best prepared to deal with a gender-nonconforming child. And here he is, right now, putting sunglasses on the dogs.

What are the odds?

Like I said, I don't cotton to "it was meant to be." I don't know a thing about what is "meant" and what is just the serendipitous one-in-ten-million chance.

To be honest, I'm not entirely happy about it. About the boy thing, I mean. I've pretty well gotten over my disappointment at not being able to buy funky, colorful girl clothes, and my disappointment at not being able to use all that work and study I put into learning to care for and braid nappy hair. But the boy thing, I'm still working on that.

I used to roll my eyes when I heard gay men and lesbians say, "I wouldn't want my kids to be gay." Because being gay was the best! I loved being a lesbian! I loved lesbians! I loved being part of that community. I loved gay men, the quiet steady ones and the flamboyant ones who showed up at Pride dressed like Vegas showgirls. I could hardly imagine a better outcome for my hypothetical children than being gay.

My thesis advisor at Goddard, Nora Mitchell, whote a poem called "Faggots" that always spoke to me. Here it is:

FAGGOTS

My lover says sometimes
that I look like a faggot, meaning
like a man
who looks like a woman.
On the dark streets a woman veers away from me
and walks faster. Hands jammed
in my pockets and fast-moving,
I am also trying to stay safe

in my city at night. Like a child
I want to protest, I'm a girl --
over and over -- to this woman,
to my father's two friends in the hardware store.
They said they'd have to see me throw
before they'd believe me, but I knew
that I threw just like a boy.
Coming up behind me, my lover teases,

you swish, as if I had to
pretend to walk like a woman,
or it were something I could mimic, like a man.
Like her I love the way faggots move;
I love the humor in their eyes,
their wrists, their chins,
as if their bodies kept faith
with the fire of laughter and repeated

some old joke the world could never get.
Queens are men
who leave their names behind
with all their reasons as delicate
as the works in the heart
of a watch. Robert
becomes Robin, or someone more
extravagent, more vulnerable still.


I love transmen and female-to-male transgender people. I think it's clear I have a way of finding them, sometimes even before they've found themselves.

But when I let myself think ahead, when I forget that we're not worrying about what happens in five or ten years or wondering if our insurance will cover hormone blockers, or whether there's a decent developmental endocrinologist in Michigan with at least some experience with gender-nonconforming children--well, I hope he's not a boy.

Because if he is, well, that comes with a whole lot of challenges. Everyone I know who has transitioned is happy with that choice. But there is often a residue of questions, of regret: from going through puberty as the wrong sex, from never having a perfectly ordinary male body. At TransHealth, I went to a workshop in which a doctor and a psychologist talked about current best practices for trans kids, which usually includes a gender-appropriate puberty. One of them referred to the damage done by past bad practices. After the workshop, a friend cried on my shoulder for a bit. He didn't say why. But I think it was regret for what might have been possible for him had he been a child today.

Gender-appropriate puberty carries a cost, though: almost always, the loss of fertility; not being allowed to participate in either girls' or boys' sports; wondering if your friends would still love you if they knew.

Then, too, harboring, under your clothes, body parts that don't match people's perceptions of your gender is dangerous. Trans people are at high risk of violence. Already, even before the Tiny Tornado chose male pronouns, I worried about what might happen if someone assumed "she" was a boy and then learned differently. Not that I expected physical violence, but expressions of discomfort, of disgust, of judgment? That, I worried about.

I want the Tiny Tornado to be who he is. Of course I do. With all my heart. And if he grows up to join that large and loving community of trans people I love so much, well, I know he will be welcomed and loved there, as indeed he already is and always has been.

I think I just want, like all parents, for my kids' lives to be easy. The Tiny Tornado is perfectly happy, deeply engaged with everything and everyone he loves, in love with his own luscious self, full of piss and vinegar. He has no idea he's on a hard road.

But I do.

A Book So Bad That Once You Start Enumerating Its Flaws, It's Hard to Stop.

Earlier today at GoodReads, I posted a review of Mira Grant's novel Feed. That first link leads to my 2-star review, but here it is in its entirety so you don't have to click:

I really like the world-building in this book. The setting is 25 years after the zombie apocalypse. Zombie-ism is caused by a virus that everyone is infected with, but only activates under certain circumstances: death is one, or being bitten by a zombie, but sometimes someone can convert to the active form for no clear reason. This is a great set-up, as it leads to a culture in which people undergo blood tests to check their viral load constantly--at every perimeter, at the door of every building--because, even though great swathes of the country have been reclaimed from the dead (while others have been given up on), the threat is in the safe zone with everyone, all the time.

I also loved that the virus also infects animals, though only animals over a certain weight convert. In the course of the book, we get zombie horses and zombie deer, which are a great touch and an added source of disquiet and menace.

On the other hand, Grant doesn't think about the implications of her own set-up: though the zombie apocalypse killed a huge proportion of the world's population, the US remains a ridiculously rich nation, with technology (like recording equipment so small it can be worn as an earring) that far surpasses what we have now. Every home has to be fitted with expensive test equipment, and vehicles with armor or other enhancements; Grant never comments on what happens to people who can't afford that (though the story of the communities that are struggling to survive without the fancy airlocks and so on would be an interesting one) or indicates at all what drives this lush economy. Also, you will be glad to know that Starbucks, Apple, Coke and other favorite companies survive the end of the world as we know it.

Sadly, Grant creates this fantastic world only to populate it with tedious, one-dimensional characters whose personalities are all described, not shown. in some cases, the actions of the characters directly contradict what we are told about them. The main character, for instance, is a newsblogger, and she tells us over and over that she is all about the Truth with a Capital T, that she leaves the opinionating to her brother/colleague/creepy crypto-lover. But then every excerpt from her writing that is included in the book is pure opinion.

The presidential candidate whose campaign they are embedded with is a big hunk of 100% pure awesome, while his opponent practically rubs his hands together and cackles with evil glee. No character undergoes any change (except to become a zombie, which doesn't quite count).

The plot, which primarily follows the presidential campaign, is tedious in the extreme. And so is the writing, which describes every single blood test in detail no matter how many times we've heard it before. It also stops telling the story to drop huge chunks of exposition in willy-nilly, and re-uses the same phrases and tropes over and over and over and over (you could have a drinking game for every time the narrator refers to the sting of the testing needle, to her risk-taking brother's habit of "poking zombies with a stick," or to her own completely unsubstantiated commitment to the Truth). Another goodreads reviewer said no other book made him appreciate the work of good editors more than this one. Amen.

I've also seen reviewers compare this to fan fiction. I tell you: I have read better-written, more compelling fan fiction.

* * *

And now, a confession: I wrote that review when I was barely 400 pages into the book's 560 total. And I am still reading it. Why? Though I suspect I know how it ends, I'm just curious enough to keep skimming along just to find out if I'm right.

This gives me plenty of opportunities to observe other flaws in the book. For instance, I can elaborate on one source of the tedium, which is that Grant doesn't know how to telescope mundane activities. For instance, suppose your characters are going into a restaurant, but the actual going in doesn't matter--nothing happens, they don't run into an old friend on her way out, nobody smashes a finger in the door, nobody glances at the newspaper rack and sees an alarming headline that is integral to the plot. They just go in. You might write something like this:

"The four of us headed into the restaurant and ordered eggs and a large pot of coffee."

Your reader can fill in the walking through the door, saying "four please" to the hostess, sitting at the booth, and so on.

Mira Grant writes all that. Her characters approach the door, reach for the handle, grab the handle and pull, hold the door until the next person reaches it, look around as the door closes behind them to see that this is an ordinary little diner, are greeted by the hostess, who is thrilled to see them because [digression into how the zombie apocalypse made public gathering places so risky that most people won't go into them anymore so little diners like this hardly get any business], are directed to a booth, sit down in the booth, pick up the menus and study them, decide on poached eggs (Shaun) and over-easy eggs (George), tell the server their order, and so on...

Grant can slice time into the smallest possible pieces. Into layers so thin that you can see light through them. And all of it with a minute attention to details that do not matter at all.

You want proof, and not just my made-up parody? OK. Three characters get into a car on page 325:

"One day you're going to call me that, and I'm going to punch your head clean off," said Steve, and slammed the door. Shaun laughed. The sound of Steve's footsteps moved around the car, where the driver's-side door opened and closed again.

Really? We need to hear the footsteps? We need it spelled out that Steve had to open the door to get in? "Steve slammed the door and took his place in the driver's seat" would have been more than sufficient, Ms. Grant. I assure you.

On pages 194-195, it takes the main character 8 paragraphs to take some pain pills out of a bottle and wash them down with some water. "When I finished swallowing," is not a phrase you ever need to use. You do not need to have your discursive time* so expanded that people have to stand around waiting for someone to finish swallowing a sip of water.

The biggest boner in the book so far is another example of a character being described one way but acting completely differently. At our house, we think of this as the Will Riker Is A Great Diplomat phenomenon, because in Star Trek: The Next Generation people are always saying that Riker is, yes, a "great diplomat," but whenever Riker is facing some aliens on the viewscreen he's always looking angry and saying, "What the hell is going on here?"

There is a character in Feed who, for 350 pages, is described as a technological whiz. She can, among other things, create security for the news team's computers that is unbreakable, while at the same time breaking through any firewalls they want a peek behind.

And then, on page 365, she has to give the main character the password to her private files and notes.

And it is a significant date in her life. Just that. Not even encoded or anagrammed or mixed up with numbers standing in for letters or anything. Just February-4-2029.

My eight-year-old has stronger passwords than that. The cryptology expert should have rattled off a password more like the one from the first season of Veronica Mars:

Veronica: I need to change the password on my email account. Someone managed to figure out the old one.

Computer guy: That's why your password should always include numbers as well as letters. Everyone thinks its fun to use the name of your dog or boyfriend, but that actually makes it easy to crack. What was your old password?

Veronica: GJ7B!X.

Epilogue, next day: I have now finished the book. My hope that all the tedious details were leading up to something was in vain. I hoped that we were hearing over and over again about people standing in airlocks waiting for the blood-test indicator to turn green because one of these times, it was going to turn red instead. Nope. It was like a play with a hundred guns on the mantelpiece in Act 1--and all of them still there when the curtain rang down three hours later.

Also, while we hear all about doors opening and closing, and Georgia squinting in the sunlight because of her sensitive eyes, and long redundant conversations about politics, the central mystery of the story is solved completely off-screen. We hear that they're working extra-hard, and then suddenly there's a packet of documents that proves everything. It's as if a detective novel were entirely about what the detective wore, where she ate lunch, and her thoughts on education policy, and then in the second-to-last chapter she suddenly says, "Oh, by the way, I've been finding clues and following leads, and the killer is Mr. Smith. Mr Smith, are you the killer?"

Mr. Smith: Yes, yes I am. I did it and I'm glad I did it and I'd do it again. [Shoots self in head.]


==============================

*Discursive time, or story time, is how long it takes for something to be shown or told; as opposed to narrative time, which is time as experienced within the story. A slow-motion shot of something falling down, for instance, has a long story time but a short narrative time, whereas a film cut or chapter break that moves characters instantly from the living room where they're drinking coffee together to the airport where they're saying good-bye has short story time but long narrative time.

Calling a Spade a Spade: Not as Easy as You Think

I ran to the store this morning to get a few things, and picked up a spade while I was there, because Raider and I seem to have lost ours somehow. I was amused that the spades were not labelled "spade" but "digging shovel." "Oh, how our language is impoverished," I said to myself. "Why could they not say 'spade'? Did they think people wouldn't understand it? Or couldn't look at it and see what it was for, with its sharp pointy blade? 'Digging shovel,' for all love. Next time I buy a big bowl it will probably be labelled 'mixing vessel.' Hmph."

At the checkout, I loaded my groceries on the belt, and then said to the clerk, "Also, I have a spade in the cart I need to pay for."

He said: That's not a spade.

Me: It certainly is.

Him: That's a shovel.

Me: A spade is a kind of shovel, certainly.

Him [checking label]: It says "digging shovel."

Me: Yes, a spade is a digging shovel.

Him: That's not a spade, unless you're twelve feet tall.

Me: What would you describe as a spade?

Him: You know, like a little shovel for your hand with a pointy end.

Me: Do you mean a trowel?

Him: What is a trowel?

Me: A trowel is a hand tool with a long blade, with a pointy end. It has a bend in the blade that runs the long way. The blade is shaped almost like a boat. [I demonstrate with my hands.]

Him: I've never heard of that.

Me: Oh, then what are you thinking of when you say spade?

Him: It's got a flat blade with a point...you know, like what bricklayers use to smooth their cement.

Me: That is also a trowel.

Him: But then what do you call the other thing?

Me: A garden trowel is what I would call it, if I had to make a distinction.

Him: Then what's a spade? Because that's a shovel you've got there.

Me: It is a kind of shovel that is called a spade. When I was a kid, if somebody yelled, "Susan, bring me the spade from the garage!" this is what they would expect me to bring them.

Him: I've never heard a shovel like that called a spade before.

Me: And yet it is a spade.

Him: I think you're wrong.

Me: I'm not.

Another Satisfied Customer

When I was in my early 20s, and my mom was in her mid-50s, she went to school at our local community college. She hadn't been in school since graduating from high school at the age of 16, but she did well and enjoyed it. She told me one time, though, that when she sat down in class she would take out a clean piece of paper for taking notes, and she would write across the top of it "KYMSUCUJ."

This meant: Keep Your Mouth Shut Until Called Upon, Joanne. It was supposed to keep her from blurting out inappropriate jokes in class.

From this single anecdote, you will readily infer that I am much like my mother. I look like her, I have her sense of humor, I have her tendency to blurt things out, her inclination to the slightly off-color, and her habit of sharing too much information. She is a collector and teller of family stories, as well. Truly, I am an apple that did not fall far from the tree in this case.

My dad, though? At first glance, we are nothing alike. He doesn't think about the past much; or, if he does, he doesn't talk about it. He doesn't talk about much, in general. He's taciturn and cranky. His default facial expression is a forbidding scowl. Once, on a family vacation, my mom, my brother, and I were waiting outside some touristy welcome center while he went in to pick up a map or something. He came out the door, carrying the map and wearing his characteristic frown. My mom said, "Another satisfied customer!" and we all cracked up. This became a running joke which only he failed to see the humor in.

In the last couple of years, though, I've noticed some of the ways he influenced me. That he was not just something to react against in my childhood and young adult years.

My two oldest kids are left-handed, color-blind boys. In this, they are the image of their grandfather. Word Boy's big square head? Grandpa. The Lego Savant's ability to build anything, and his interest in mechanisms? Grandpa.

Their rigidness and inflexibility? Grandpa, too. Since he always had power over me, I saw him as ridiculously controlling. My dad believes there is one right way to do everything, and that way is his way. (I've probably told you the story from when I was a teenage girl with long, thick hair, and my dad got mad at me for using too much shampoo. He showed me how much shampoo he used--a tiny dot in the palm of his hand--and informed me that this was how much I should also use. This from a man who was already bald when he got married at the age of 24.)

I watch my kids, though, and wonder how much of my dad's tendency to be controlling was about his own emotional comfort. When I watch Word Boy struggle with perfectionism, or fall to pieces when presented with a question that has no single right answer, I see my dad. When the Lego Savant tries to micro-manage the whole family so that his environment can be comfortable for him, I see my dad. When I think about my own inflexibility--which I didn't fully recognize until I became a mom and had less control over my time and environment than I'd ever had before--I see myself in my dad, and my dad in me. I recently read a blog post (which I can't find now but will link to if it turns up) in which the writer said, "I have to write 'be spontaneous' in my calendar, or I'll forget to do it," and that is a pretty good description of me, as well. I used to think my dad was very controlling of his loved ones because we were his loved ones, and that he was trying to take care of us and keep us safe by guiding us very carefully, with attention to every minute detail.

I still think that.

But now I wonder if he wasn't also managing some form of the anxiety that seems to run in our family. Or suffering from a mild version of anxiety's stepsibling, obsessive-compulsive disorder (my first actual psychiatric diagnosis was "Generalized Anxiety Disorder with Obsessive-Compulsive Tendences." Now I wonder if they shouldn't just print that right on the birth certificates of new babies born into my family).

I'm like my dad in other ways, too, if you look behind the superficial. My dad keeps busy building things, fixing things, planning to build things. He spent most evenings and weekends throughout my childhood in his very well-equipped garage, doing god only knows what with power tools. My brother is like this, too--they live next door to each other and have quite the impressive pole barn workspace, with heat and a little fridge and microwave. My brother has build a dune buggy (from scratch!) and a race car (from a regular car) out there.

I used to think my dad and I were not alike: he works with his hands, whereas I am a word person. While he's rebuilding an engine, I'm reading something or writing something or taking a class on something. If my home needs a minor repair, I can live with that quite comfortably for a good long time--indeed, I recently noticed something small that needed fixing ( I can't remember what now) and realized that it had been broken for six months and it had never occurred to me to fix it.

My dad, on the other hand, read exactly one book the whole time I was growing up (though he and my mom have been hooked on audiobooks they listen to together for some years now).

So, just how are we alike in all this?

We both like to be busy. We both are always planning and doing projects. We are both quick to volunteer our expertise--you need a new driveway poured? He's there. You need a press release written for your non-profit organization? I'm happy to do that for you.

My dad, despite his habitual scowl, has a wonderful capacity for maintaining relationships, as well. All the years I was growing up, we only went on three vacations-for-vacation's-sake. But we traveled a lot. We spent many weekends at my grandma and grandpa's house in the woods up north; we drove as often as twice a year to Virginia, where we visited my dad's best friend Kevin and his family. We probably logged thousands of miles around Michigan visiting my dad's counsins and aunts and uncles and old friends from high school or college. We were always off to see somebody.

Even now, when my parents take their annual RV trek to the warmth of the southwest, they give much of their time to meeting up with relatives and friends in Arizona and southern California.

My dad and Kevin have been close friends since they were in the Army together in the 50s, and they have probably seen each other 2-3 times a year almost every year for all that time. My dad's other best friend, John, was his office mate when they were both hired as entry-level engineers at GM in the early 60s. Sometimes when Kevin makes one of his rare visits to Michigan, John and Kevin and my dad sit around the dining room table drinking beer, and John and Kevin have drunken pseudo-arguments about which one is really my dad's best friend. At least, they used to when I was young.

Like my dad, I love old friends--I keep saying that one of the benefits of middle age that nobody tells you about in advance is that you start to have friends you've known for 20, 30, 35 years. Like my dad, I rarely travel just to go see a place. Though I am not close to my extended family, I'm very close to an extended chosen family and I travel multiple times a year to be with these people. When I worry that I might lose a friend, because someone moves away, for instance, I think of my dad and the role model he is for not letting mere geography control his relationships.

(And I have many pleasant mental images of my dad laughing with his friends. He can relax the scowl when he's around them--or around his grandkids.)

I suppose I've been a cliche all my life--hard at work differentiating from my parents as a young adult, finding more common ground as a no-longer-young adult. But I would say that this is also one of the satisfactions of middle age for me.

My dad spent the day at my house today, working on fixing up my breezeway. He's putting in all-new screens, a new floor, and new doors. I worked on my front yard, weeding and moving some things around and getting ready for a big delivery of mulch. Partway through the day, I posted this as a status update on Facebook:

I have just peeked my head into the breezeway to admire my dad's work. We chat a bit.

Me: Well, I'm going to get back to work in the front yard.

Dad: Why don't you get those kids out here to help you?

I laugh.

Dad: Why are you all "ha ha"? They're old enough.

Me: I know. And they will help. They like helping in the yard. I'm laughing because I'm 46 years old and you're still bossing me around.

Dad: Well, that's the way I am.

Me: I know. That's why I laughed instead of getting mad.

We both laugh and then we go about our business.

Speak at Your Own Peril: "It's Just a Phase"

Yesterday we had lunch at a Burmese restaurant. I will be ever-grateful to our friend ODG for taking us there. Our family is in Philadelphia for the TransHealth conference, and are just a few blocks from Chinatown. The Tiny Tornado loves Chinese food, so we've been strolling down there every day, and having the kind of wonderful meals where we are all passing plates around saying, "Try this! Have a bite of this!" The Burmese food was a great new experience. Similar to other Asian foods, but with a different kind of flavor and spiciness. I had a chicken dish that made me understand why people go on and on about the flavors in food--I'd put a bite in my mouth, and it tasted lemony but not sweet, with an undertone of smokiness. Then, as the lemon flavor faded, a spicy heat would rise up to take its place. I couldn't eat it quickly, because this layering and progression of flavors was so worth experiencing that I had to wait it out each time. Wowza.

Anyway, I was complaining at lunch about people saying that the Tiny Tornado's interest in boy things and boy clothes is "just a phase." Sometimes they use those exact words, and sometimes they simply imply them. Someone told me yesterday that she knew authoritatively that children do not have a fixed gender identity until age 6 (tell that to the 11-year-old girl I met yesterday who transitioned male-to-female before starting kindergarten). Another said that she thought all kids would be wildly gender creative and exploratory if they were free to do so, which begs the question of why my two older kids, certainly as free to do so as my youngest, were only mildly gender-transgressive as young kids. And someone also told me yesterday (I get this one a lot, but only from people who haven't actually met the Tiny Tornado and encountered the force of his will) that the TT is "trying to be like her older brothers," or "emulating her dad." Which, again, begs the question of all the girls with older brothers they love and admire who nonetheless do not dress like them and demand that everyone call them "he."

But, yes, someone also said to me yesterday, in so many words, "it's probably just a phase."

I was complaining about this at lunch, and the Lego Savant said, "Really? Someone said that to you here? You'd think all the people at a place like this would know better." Sometimes the Lego Savant surprises us. He seems to sail through life blissfully unaware that a surprising proportion of his adult friends and loved ones are gay, lesbian, transgendered, transsexual, or queer in various other ways, or that these things are seen as deviant in some places and by some people. Every now and then, though, he comes out with something that makes us realize that he has been paying attention all along, understands a great deal, and has some insight to share.

Anyway: those of you who are my Facebook friends may already know that on Thursday morning when we arrived at the conference, the Tiny Tornado was asked which pronouns he preferred so that it could be indicated on his nametag. You can probably guess from that sentence that he chose the boy pronouns.

I could do a whole digression here about how he has never seemed to care too much about pronouns before, but now I wonder if it just hadn't really occurred to him because nobody had offered him the option before. Because suddenly he cares very much about the pronouns, even getting angry at the Lego Savant yesterday when LS slipped and called him "she." (An apology, a hug, and an explanation that we're all doing our best but will slip sometimes seemed to resolve that.)

But: today I am talking about the expression "it's just a phase." Because, as I said at lunch, the next person who says this to me is going to get a fork in the Adam's Apple. (Metaphorical fork. Metaphorical Adam's Apple. I am a Quaker, after all.)

Because, listen: this phrase is not only dismissive of my child's self-understanding and how important it is to him right now, but it implies that anything we do in our lives for only a while, any exploration we undertake is somehow unimportant if it doesn't lead to permanent change.

Raider ViaDude (my new anagrammatic pseudonym for my sweetie) went to a presentation yesterday afternoon where the speaker said that the few studies that have been done show that about 25-40% of kids who are transgendered before puberty actually fully transition. Some reach puberty and discover they're actually gay, for instance, or otherwise have some different understanding of themselves than "I must be a girl" or "I must be a boy." [Insert digression here on the very interesting distinction made in the parent support group the other day between "expression" and "identity." I'll save it for another post.]

So there's really a pretty good chance that the Tiny Tornado will not permanently identify as male, or choose to transition. But that doesn't mean that what's going on now is "just" anything. Clearly it is a very important exploration for him, something he feels strongly about and is enjoying (you should have seen him glow when I helped him find some shorts he could wear as swim trunks, instead of his tankini, to the trans families pool party last night).

When I think about my own life, there are some things that were "phases" but were nonetheless very formative for me. One that comes immediately to mind whenever I think about something like this is my flirtation with punk rock when I was 18 and 19. I was never really a punk rocker, more of a hanger-on wannabe, but being exposed to that subculture and that music did good things for me.

Recently, I spent a year or so seriously considering attending seminary, culminating in a visit during a prospective student weekend. But within a few weeks of that visit, which I enjoyed, it had become clear to me that I was not going to attend seminary, and I have not had a tinge of regret or any residual urges about it.

Was that "just" a phase? Or was that me spending some time asking an important question about my life, which was eventually clearly answered in the negative?

So, you know, when people say that the Tiny Torndao is "just" going through a phase with his gender explorations, it irks me. It irks me because even if tomorrow, or next month, or in a year he says, "You know what, mom, I'm really a girl and I feel very sure about that," that doesn't mean that this time of wanting to be seen as a boy, treated as a boy, talked to and talked about as a boy, is "just" anything. It's the life he's living now. It's him asking a really important question.

We don't need to wait ten years to find out whether he's "really" trans to know that his life right now, at 4 years old, matters. There is no "just" at all about a little person living a great big life.