Father's Day

Not simply because the children I parented don’t acknowledge me on this day, (our children literally owe us nothing…) but because, as I sit in the house he built with his own hands, the flood of memories of my own father are so bittersweet.

It’s likely useful to acknowledge that my father was born in late 1925.

His entire life, he read at only a first or second grade level -at best.

His own father preserved a pamphlet from the KKK with their anthem on the back of it, found in my grandfather’s trunk -tucked away in the basement here. (The juxtaposition of this pamphlet hidden away in the basement with the black dolls from her childhood my mother kept carefully wrapped in her hope chest… isn’t lost on me.)

My father was far less racist than his own father, for what that’s worth -but I’ll save that narrative for another day.

(Happy Juneteenth, y’all.)

My father was gifted and blessed with a gender expansive child in December of 1965, just days after his own 40th birthday. He accepted this gift in much the same way other men of his day did -with shame, denial, derision and ultimately, violence.

He was also a master carpenter.

This house, built over 1952 and 1953, stands as solidly today as it did then. I have come to love and treasure this house in ways I never thought possible. I had to return to this place, and I’m grateful I have.

At least some of his well-used tools, and a couple of the old toolboxes dating back to who know’s when, still live here. Actually, they came back to here after my brother died. He’d inherited all of our father’s tools because… well, because he was really the only boy born to this family. And tools are for boys. Or something.

It is interesting to me how very often I use the metaphor of the toolbox in my work with LGBTQIA+ folks who are challenging addictions and diagnoses. It’s how I tried so often to walk beside my own brother, rejected and rebuked at every turn. There was nothing my brother could or would learn from a punk sissy like myself. My love had no value to him, ever. Took years to simply accept that and move along. So I’m grateful to work with my chosen siblings today who want to find answers, and tools, and Hope. My brother never seemed to believe there was anything worth hoping for. He stopped living 40 years before he died.

When I tell you there was no space or air to come out as trans in my family of origin, I mean just that. The narrative is that my mother ruled the roost while my father was some hapless bystander. That, dear reader, from my perspective, is not nearly the whole story. In fact, it’s bullshit. At least where little Martha was concerned. My father, if he had to have a third child at all, along with my then 15 year-old brother, wanted another male child in the house. Not my situation at All. At first glance, I would do. But not for very long.

I’m told I both walked and talked at 9 months-old. (And haven’t sat down and shut up since…) I have to assume the swish they hated in my stride formed in those early months, but my memory doesn’t stretch quite that far back. I’m fairly certain they all knew what I was well before I discovered it myself. By the age of 3, I knew, too. I began the knowing that I was an unwelcome and inconvenient human all those years ago. An open family “secret” added to the pile of disappointments and secrets that decorated our home like so much tacky furniture.

I want no sympathy, by the way. That isn’t my point in inviting you in. My story is far from unique. In fact, it is ubiquitous as asphalt in the suburbs, and possibly just as misguided by fear.

I’ve spent my own life gathering up all the metaphorical tools I could find- to endure. To want to endure. To cling to hope. To find days I do not dread, and to finally feel that ache -the ache of the unwanted- relieved.

Had you told me back then -back when a puberty not mine became inevitable; back when they helped me drain the color from my existence because “it was time”- that I’d spend the better part of my 50’s finally FINALLY F I N A L L Y ! ! ! being myself out loud… I’d have told you I had no plans to live to ever BE 50. These days were not something I foresaw.

Being a parent saved my life. It gave me a reason to set myself and my own demons as far aside as I was able, to focus on breaking these generational patterns, on focusing with love to raise humans – and to literally ask for nothing in return. Because the cost of coming through my parents was steep, excrutiating, and (seemingly) unending. Until it finally ended November 24, 2017. The day Toots, my mother, drew her final breath.

I have never sobbed so hard -convulsing with relief- as I did on that day. That day, both my parents were gone. And along with them all the expectations I could never meet -up to and including acting out their version of me- were gone, too. Or at least on their way out my door.

I decided very early on that I would never raise my children with a sense of obligation or duty toward Me. Responsibility toward life? Yes. Toward themselves? Absolutely. But having spent so many years doing so many things out of a sense of obligation, I cannot wish that on anyone. The day the burden of those obligations lifted was the day I began, so very slowly, to sharpen the tools I’d collected for myself, and to find brand new ones to work with.

I remember laying in bed and sobbing as a child. So many nights. Alone. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12… Yearning to be able to talk to either parent about Me -but I of so many words never did find the right words under the rubble of my childhood. I choked on the detritus of their unfulfilled and unmentioned dreams. It hung in our air and yellowed our walls like the smoke from my father’s ever-present Salem cigarettes.

It’s entirely possible my parents “loved” one another at some point. But to my memory they rarely ever liked each other much at all. Or us kids. Or the life they’d chosen to build together. The walls he built remain sturdy. The children he built them for, not so much.

I tried desperately to “be the man” my brother never would or could. To “be the man” my father was lauded to be.

To “be the man” my mother deserved among a sea of men who fell short of her. But I never could master being what I Never WAS to begin with. I have always known myself to be a girl, pretending to be a boy, because they insisted, not because she ever wanted a moment of it. I have ALWAYS tried to “make the best of things.”

The bittersweet part is that for as well as they both thought they knew “me” they rarely ever even bothered to meet me. Because, to them, I (the truth of Me) was a thing that didn’t exist in the first place. They must have assumed my femininity was an affect they could beat out of me, otherwise what was all that yelling unto violence about when I simply tried to play with dolls?

Not living up to parental expectations is certainly a universal theme, particularly among women who just couldn’t be what they were expected to be because the spark inside was just…bigger than the limits of the Rules.

This is the story of a girl, who despite it all, loved the father who refused to see her. He refused to acknowledge her. She tries each day to forge those massive hurts into her own tools, and then with all her might, Imperfectly shares every tool she can grasp with her siblings far and wide. We All deserve to be seen, and loved, for who we Are. And we all deserve a toolbox full of sturdy tools. Not one reserved for those we assume to be boys.

Peace Lovelies,

–MM

--Thank you for reading my essay. If you would like to stay up to date with my upcoming work, please subscribe below. Also, tips are always greatly appreciated. Peace, loves!