Page 49 of Best Woman
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m not.” She turns her head my way. “But you are. You learned well even though I was a bad teacher.”
“I had to,” I say. “Didn’t want to cause any accidents.”
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “You’re my daughter, Julia, and I love you. I’m not perfect, but I love you.”
And she does. I know that. I grew up with the unshakable knowledge that my mother would kill for me, die for me.
But I’d also learned that wasn’t always enough.
Not everything is life or death, some things just feel like them.
You can support someone and care for them, and show your love through words and deeds, but some truths live too deep to root out.
For my mother, on some level, I will always be the little boy she gave birth to and watched take his first steps.
She can tell me to wear a bra and take me out for pedicures and use the correct name and pronouns and really, truly mean them, but it will never erase the life we lived together for the first two-thirds of my existence.
I don’t want it to, nor do I want her to retcon her memories.
A few years ago I might have wished that every recollection of my first twenty-five years on earth could be scrubbed from the minds of everyone who knows me, but now I understand how necessary it is to have people in my life who’ve known me for all of it, known every version of me.
It helps me remember myself, and keep building the Julia I want to be for the rest of my life.
“I’ve been telling myself for years that my transition made us closer than we’d ever been,” I say.
“It has,” she agrees, sounding hopeful, as though we’ve moved past the hard part of the conversation.
“And yeah, maybe that’s true, but we weren’t that close before, so how much of a difference did it really make?
I mean”—I take a deep breath—“I’ve spent most of my life too scared to really talk to you, so when I finally did and it was about something so monumental, that was this huge shift in our relationship, but it only got us to this somewhat even playing field.
Or some kind of sports metaphor, I don’t know. ”
“Maybe we should leave those to your brother.”
“I was so grateful that you were supportive when I came out—both times, if I’m being honest. I have one friend whose parents won’t ask if they’re dating anyone and another friend whose parents pretend she doesn’t exist. I’ve always felt so lucky that I got this baseline acceptance from you that I was afraid to ask for anything more. ”
“What more can I do, Julia? Really, tell me, what can I do more than love you?”
“You can love me, not the me I might be if I lived up to your standards for womanhood. Or even just…personhood. You never criticized me for wanting to be a woman but ever since, you’ve been judging me for the kind of woman I decided to be.”
That’s the truth of it, and we both know it. We sit in silence for a moment, but of course she has to break it.
“You’re right,” she says.
I don’t think she’s ever said those words to me. “Come again?”
“I love you, Julia, and I know you, because you’re my child.
But I don’t…understand you, any better than my mother understood me.
You’ve made all these choices for your life, and I want you to have everything that you want.
I try as much as possible to guide you when I can and stay out of your way the rest of the time. ”
“I’m twenty-nine years old, Mom.”
“But you’re still my baby.”
When we were little, Mom used to read Aiden and me a book called Love You Forever, and the mother’s refrain from the book was one she’d repeat to us in tender moments.
“I love you forever, I’ll like you for always.
As long as I’m living my baby you’ll be.
” When I was eight, twelve, even twenty, it was enough.
“I can’t keep trying to be the daughter you’ve always wanted,” I choke out. “The daughter you have has to be good enough.”
“You are,” she says, voice thick. Her hand comes down on mine on the steering wheel. “I promise, you are.”
It doesn’t erase or excuse what happened at the reception.
It was so public and shameful. I still feel…
dirty, in a way, and caught out. I feel like a fraud, and the world has made me feel that way so many times.
But my mom never had. Until now. Something has been broken between us.
I don’t think I’ll ever see her the same way again, and an ugly part of me almost delights in the symmetry: this must be how she felt four years ago, when I told her I wasn’t the person she’d thought I was for twenty-five years.
And thinking about it that way, as if it’s an even trade, lets me see the compromise we’re both making.
If she can try to let me be the daughter she never had, I can try to let her be the mother I always wanted.
“It’s OK, Mom. I love you too. Don’t do it again.” She doesn’t look any more reassured by the words than I feel saying them. I pull into the drive-thru and open the window. “One large Diet Coke, please.”