When I Grow Up Mommy I Want To Be A Girl

Mom wanted me to be a girl. She wanted a daughter. I may repeat this time and time again over the next several posts. But what was she to say to me when I first told her of my desire to be a girl.

Should she had told me that it could never be.  That I could not be the person I wanted to be.  Should she had been realistic and imposed boundaries on what I could and could not do with my life.

Now some may say that it is one thing to discourage me if I had aspirations of being president of the United States.  Many would see that as wrong for a Mom who wanted nothing but the best for her children.  Is it not just as wrong to tell a child you can never be a girl because you are a boy?  Many would say yes. But it would still be a lie.  In my early years, if I am to believe what I heard from her lips, she tried not to be too encouraging but she also did not want to be discouraging.

The point I am trying to make is that it was a very fine line for my mother.  Her son wanted to be a girl.  She wanted a girl.  She wanted a daughter.  As I grew older, I became more demanding when it came to spending time as Yvonne, being Yvonne.  However, in this never-ending circle that is my life, I would not have been so demanding if I had not come to know a life as Yvonne.

I was about seven years old when Mom bought me a dress that came to be my favorite dress.  It was fuschia and had a sash with a little flower instead of a belt.  I always felt so pretty in that dress.  I love the way the straps felt resting across my shoulder and the flow of the dress as I walked.

Every time I wore the dress Mom would almost tear up.  She felt I was so pretty in the dress.  It made me happy to make my Mom so happy that she would cry.  When did it become important to me to be a girl for my Mom so she could be happy (or happier)?  I simply cannot say.  All I know for sure is that wearing my fuschia dress was my most favorite thing to do at the age of seven.

Most of my earliest memories are those of me as a girl, of me being a girl for my Mommy. I came to know how to make my Mom smile. All I had to say is "My name is Yvonne" and Mom would beam. I was very happy with my life. I will never look back on those early years and judge myself or Mom for the decisions we made. It is totally irrelevant to me whether I first asked Mom if I could be a girl or if she first asked me to be a girl for her.

And just as I can not recall (nor do I care) where my interest in boys first arose, I cannot recall a time when being pretty as a little girl was not mostly about being pretty for boys. Once again, maybe it was not so much that boys would find me pretty as it was that Mom seemed to take pleasure in thinking boys found me pretty.