Category: substack

Or, why I’m crying at the library

I’ve been chatting with my aunt over email. A few months back, I’d contacted her to find out the history of some roving fiber I’d ended up with, which originated from her, hungry to find out how it might be part of the fabric of my family, wondering if it had been in the hands of my grandmother before she died.

There was a span of time when my maternal grandmother learned how to work with fibers, the same way she’d learned to do most things during her life – she simply decided to. She took classes and learned to shear, card, spin, weave, and knit. (I have a few small skeins of dark brown wool and a tiny bit of cream she spun that I’ve saved for years in my stash.) My woodworking grandfather made her a loom and a spinning wheel, as well as sets of the same for his four daughters. It can’t be overstated that time spent with my grandparents, and the way I felt loved by them, were some of the warmest times of my life.

My aunt writes to me about the time she went on a family trip years ago through central Texas, where she took her kids to visit a wool processing plant and an angora goat farm. This is the trip where she charmed the wholesaler into letting her leave with some delightful, glistening mohair, which she simply had to have, some of which I now hold in my hands.

My aunt, who, my entire life, has signed each card and letter to me (and every one of my 50+ cousins), “from your favorite aunt,” asked what kind of art I’ve been doing, guessing, correctly, that I was learning something new, just like my grandma always was.

My grandmother was an artist and I spent weeks during the summer with her going on walks, clutching my pencil with a little sketch book under my arm, where she would point out a tree and ask, “what colors do you see,” to which I’d reply, “green,” and she’d say, “and what else,” over and over, until she’d pointed out all the purple undertones and the yellow highlights and the red shadows. She helped me see texture and nuance and that black isn’t really black and white isn’t really white. In my mind, I can see her sensible sandals crunching the groundcover, hear the cicadas in the trees, and smell citrus and honey hanging in the dry air of Arizona.

I email my (favorite) aunt and show her the doodles I create while I’m talking to clients for hours on a workday. Watercolors and dots. Lots of dots, dots turning into hearts and flowers. She enthusiastically raves about my notebook doodles, telling me they are beautiful and moving. I didn’t realize until reading her email how starved I’ve been for family love and interest from a parental figure, and my heart hurts while at the same time feeling full. I sit down to have a cup of tea with these realizations and cry for the family I’ve lost.

She writes again and tells me about a trip she once took to Colorado’s Estes Park Wool Market with her sister (another one of my favorite aunts) where they took a spinning class, after which she spun many different weights and styles while enjoying the process immensely. My aunt offers to send me the odds and ends of those yarns all these years later. To say I’m excited to get the box is an understatement. It feels like a package full of love coming to me, which I suppose it is.

When the box comes, each ziplock bag is labeled with things like “Black Kambolett 2 ply,” and “Wool/Angora Blend.” I open each one, touch the different fibers to see how they feel, press in a few cedar balls, and place the bags on the shelf next to my other fibers waiting for the moment when I have enough space cleared in my studio to be able to think in texture, which, as it turns out, is a bit harder for me than thinking/feeling in the many hued paints lining the wall, even with stacks of books on the floor right next to the canvases.

Maybe I forgot to mention – I’ve taken up weaving. A love of mine took me to a Saori weaving class for my birthday (now last year!) and I had more fun there than I’ve ever had trying to do something so difficult. The Saori looms have pedals! You press down with your foot, watch the warp threads do-se-do, and whirrrzoohm you shoot the weft threads through on the boat shuttle, before pushing down the other pedal and zooming it back. Over and over and over, changing out fibers to your heart’s content, but without all the anxiety I’m prone to when trying to do something without making a mistake, because Saori weaving style doesn’t concern itself with those kinds of silly things, like the perception of mistakes. Apparently, it’s perfect as is.

As a neuro-sparkly individual who wants to make sure I’m not wrong, how many times would you guess I asked the instructor, who peeked over our shoulders in the studio she keeps on the top floor of her Salish Sea private home, if I was doing it right? I’m sure the weavers next to me lost count. I kept asking in different ways, just in case I’d get a different answer, like, what do you do with the ends, and, what about when you start a new fiber in the middle, and, how do you make sure it looks good, and, how will this totally different type of fiber feel being next to this one, and she patiently kept repeating the same thing – do what you feel and it’ll be good. It’s perfect. Whatever you do, it’s perfect. It took me most of the class to get to that zen place, but when I finally did, it was lovely.

I’ve begun taking photos with an eye to weaving the image. A few months later, we went to the coast and I stared at the sea, drinking in the colors, the textures, the gradients, the smells, and fingering in my mind the types of yarns and fibers that would do it justice. It’s an exciting way for my brain to think about old skills in a new way. I’ve now got a folder on my phone with about 100 images in it waiting to be woven.

I also may have forgotten to mention that my aunt asked, as payment for the package of her old stash (of love), that I send her a 5X7 of one of my doodles in pinks and maroon. After getting pneumonia and a virus and making her wait about a month, I finally sent her two, which was risky, because the second had streaks and blushes of orangey creamsicle in it, but I thought it looked so nice with the other one, that I decided to go ahead.

When she got them, she sent an email filled with exclamation points, raving about my work. I cried.

A few days later, my aunt sends me a photo of my two doodles in the frame she chose for her bedroom wall. It has three windows cut into the matting, the center one being empty. “Would you please send me a headshot of yourself so I can insert it between your doodles? I would really appreciate it,” she writes.

I screenshot the email and send it to Brandelyn, who is at that moment working just on the other side of the sliding glass doors that separate my work studio from the living room, which has doubled as her office since the beginning of the pandemic. “She wants a photo,” I text. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. She wouldn’t even recognize me.”

I don’t need to explain to Brandelyn the feeling of dread that’s begun spreading in the pit of my stomach. She knows that right now I’m struggling to put into words just how jarring it is to suddenly remember that how I look on the outside matters so much to others, especially the members of my family who watched me grow up and delighted in the ways I reminded them of my grandma, with my high cheekbones and my smile. At my grandma’s funeral I was stopped by a dozen friends and family, all telling me how much I reminded them of Muriel. I loved that they saw her in me. And I don’t feel any different on the inside now; I’m still just me. But when I’m suddenly reminded that what others see on the outside is not what they expected, it can be really disorienting to be a nonbinary trans person. I’m suddenly so sad about how disappointed my aunt will feel because of how I look.

The sliding glass doors open. (shwoosh) Brandelyn pokes her nose through. “Hi, baby,” she says as she makes eye contact. “What if,” she continues, carefully walking closer to me in my recliner, as if to avoid startling a wild animal, “what if we just believed your aunt. Maybe she has heard through the grapevine (I snort) that you look different and that’s ok with her. Let’s assume she won’t be disgusted or disappointed. You could even send her a photo of the two of us if that feels safer. She probably hasn’t seen our engagement photos.”

I stare at her blankly while my brain tries to process what she’s saying. Is there really a possibility where my aunt understands what she’s asking for and it’s ok with her? Is it possible she won’t be saddened by the changes HRT has made to how my body looks and recoil, wishing she hadn’t spent so much time emailing with me? I will feel heartbroken if she does.

“Ok,” I simply say. “I’ll try.”

I find a photo of Brandelyn and I standing under some trees along the side of a barn where Claren goes to ride horses in the summer. It was a fun afternoon. We’re smiling. We’re obviously happy. And the sides of my head are shaved in an unmistakably very queer haircut. There are whiskers on my chin. My neck is thicker, my jawline changed into a more masculine form. Now I feel almost as vulnerable as if I was naked in the photo.

I hit send and there it goes to my aunt, who may or may not know I’m queer nonbinary trans, who may or may not be disgusted or disappointed, and who I won’t ever ask to call me Leoh or by different pronouns because my gender fluidity gives me an easy out. Besides, I tell myself, I do love being called both Leoh he/they and Leah she/her. (It’s when I hear only one for a long time that it starts to feel wrong.)

My aunt replies an hour later with, “That’s a good picture of the two of you, but do you have any singles? A selfie?” I die.

Now in full panic mode, I send a screenshot to Brandelyn. “I absolutely cannot send her a photo of just me,” I text.

A few seconds later, the sliding glass doors open. (shwoosh) Brandelyn pokes her nose through. “Baby,” she says softly and firmly, in that way that is a complete sentence. “Let’s believe your aunt really wants a photo of you with your paintings.”

I gesture, filled with anxiety, completely out of words. I send two choices and wait.

SIDEBAR (With More Parentheticals)

A client told me yesterday (in the middle of last September!) she feels like she’s going crazy because her friends keep doing things that exclude her and hurt her feelings, but they keep saying they love her and that everything is good between them. I ask her, “Let’s say they do really love you and this is how they show it. How does their love feel? Do you want to be loved like that?” (And Reader, I listened to my own advice that day.)

Two days earlier (in the middle of last September!), a sibling I had been in the process of very slowly reconnecting with (since the fall of 2023), emailed to tell me they realized it’s too psychologically distressing for them to stay in contact with me. They can’t see or hear the “real” me in the me I am now. I have sympathy for how that must be for them, to have me look and sound like a stranger, but hearing that who they love is a version of me that doesn’t exist is still painful. They have “put me in a box on the shelf” until later (when is later and why would later come?).

My sibling ends their email with, “love you forever,” which I believe they genuinely mean and it reminds me of the other last words I’ve heard from family in the past few years. “Don’t contact me. I still love you, though,” and, “I love you, but, yeah, I need space,” and, “You keep changing and I love you, but it’s too much.” There is a graveyard of family and friend relationships in the wake of my coming out.

That kind of being loved doesn’t feel like love to me, even when I understand the Why. I’m understanding more and more why trying to love myself has always been a herculean uphill battle for me, when the action of showing love to me, by them, is so conditional. I’m 54 (in a handful of days) and I’m just now, in the last couple of years, knowing how to actually Love Me, beyond saying that I do, which is a really important initial step in itself.

You’ve Been Framed!

The email “You’ve Been Framed!” arrives as I’m sitting in the library, working on some aggravating WordPress bug on my website, while Claren is engrossed, meticulously looking at her favorite books, row by row. I open it, curious (and dreading)(and hopeful) to see what my aunt has done, what she’ll say. And there is a photo of me with my doodles. And the file name is “Leohframed.” I screenshot it and send it to Brandelyn.

I start to cry, right there in the library, (which frankly, I could do more often). Such a simple acknowledgement hits me in all the tender places. The dichotomy between the love these two family members are shown me is vast. The contrast is unmissable.

Over the next few weeks, I make a hat out of the yarn my aunt sent. It’s the first successful hat I’ve made using knit, knit, purl for the ribbing, and that’s after 17 tries. But, I did it, and I’m proud that I did it. I’m keeping the hat for myself, but as a thank you, I send my aunt a little woven Christmas ornament based on a photo I took of one of my favorite spots along the Washington Coast.

Sometimes, someone loves you so obviously that you can’t miss it or mistake it for anything else. You don’t have to wonder. You just know. I want to love others that way. I’m so thankful for the example.

-Previously posted on Substack

After my eyes are scanned and my palm gets read by a machine, Matt smiles widely and walks me to the front of the security line while asking me how I’m doing. I lie and say I’m fine, but can’t force a smile as he hands my info to the TSA officer who scrutinizes my face. I know in about five minutes I’m about to get a pat down while my unbelted jeans threaten to fall off, my arms out like a scarecrow, from an officer who is reluctant, yet insistent, in understanding the shape of my body under my clothes. Being nonbinary trans is confusing to some people.

If I really answered Matt, because I thought he had the time to care, I’d tell him I’m sad – just impossibly sad – about so many things. I’m not sure how anyone is functioning in this particular moment in time. I would tell him that my little squishy, human-creature brain can’t really comprehend our global suffering and I waffle back and forth between feeling like the best thing I can do is keep going, one step at a time, in whatever direction seems the most open, or coming to a complete halt, nestling under the pile of clean clothes waiting on the couch for me to fold them, while watching Zac Efron and Darin Olien help save baby kangaroos after a fire in Australia.

I would tell Matt that the losses in the last few years have gutted me and that I don’t choose to share about it much because everyone else is barely standing upright as well, but that has come with the cost of connection, and sometimes I feel so starkly alone I’m see-through. I’d tell him that I keep pacing myself and doing my best to stay open to connection and I also feel like I’m failing at it with most people, which triggers my people-pleasing parts into overcompensating, which sends me into an exhausted doom spiral, which I barely pull out of before spectacularly crashing (Come on, Mav, do some of that pilot shit!).

“Matt,” I would say, a hand laid easily on his shoulder, “I’m scared most of the time that I’m a terrible host to the ecosystems living in, on, and around me, but I refuse to give up, possibly because I’m stupidly stubborn, but it’s kept me alive this long, so I’m gonna keep going.” I’d give his arm a slight squeeze before walking away, turning once to look back and say, “You take care, Matt!” And, I’d mean it.

A guy deplaning passes me as I’m waiting at the gate, and turns to his friend and loudly whispers, “I hate that hair style,” while making a thumb motion towards me. His friend, swinging his bag onto a shoulder, turns to take a look, and grunts in agreement while maintaining eye contact with me for a few long seconds.

I watch them walk away until they pass around the corner from my view, leaving their turdy comment squatting next to me at gate N1.

~.~.~

The person next to me on the plane has ended up in the middle seat. I do what I can to keep my body to myself during the flight, tucked into the window as best I can, hyper-aware of each instance the cuff of my sweater falls on their side and where my elbows are at all times, leaving them the arm rest which they finally take advantage of halfway through our two hour, fifteen minute flight. We don’t say a single word to each other, but by the end I’ve learned that they are learning Spanish (Grito!), that they have a younger sibling who will pick them up from the airport, that they have a Pinterest board with dark wood paneled dream rooms, filled with kitsch in hues of blues and greens, they prefer diet soda over regular, they are gluten-free, and they have a habit of intermittently jacking their left knee up and down at a frantic pace and yanking on the strings of their sweater when they are nervous. They get nervous a lot. I think about offering them one of the dozen fidgeters I have in my possession, but decide not to because I would have to actually talk to them and that seems too hard.

I wonder what they might have learned about me on the flight as I slowly exit the plane behind them, my backpack hitting the seats as I walk down the aisle, sardined between someone I know, but didn’t meet, and someone nipping my heels, who sees me as something standing between them and freedom. I wonder if they learned nothing about me because they weren’t conditioned to situationally be hyper-aware. I wonder if they noticed that I tried to not encroach on their middle-seat-space. I wonder if I’ll ever feel safe enough to take up space without guilt. I wonder if I will always be a people-pleaser, unconsciously hoping to soothe myself with positive feedback to feel like I’m good.

~.~.~

My son and I are at the bowling alley slash arcade. He’s walking around with the 5-year-old collecting tickets for future prizes. I’ve been following the 3-year-old around watching him slam his tiny fist down on buttons with flashing lights and carnival music. We don’t need money for these machines. He’s happy just to have free rein of the place and access to any machine he wants.

After awhile, we corral the grands to a booth on the far side of the cavernous room for lunch. They are perfectly wonderful, these two. The older one did Legos with me for several hours the day before. He’s got the precision, dexterity, and patience of an older child and can do the age 10+ Lego sets by himself. But, he humors me so I can feel included and allows me to find the upcoming blocks for him, setting them just so on the pictures in the instruction manual, before completing the entire page all at once. He is meticulous with the creative brain of a builder. He forges entirely new games, complete with multi-step rules, on the spot. He also (almost) always wins them.

The younger one has dandelion-puff, blond curls all over his head and the smile of an angel. He has sparkly eyes. He spontaneously comes up to you to tell you he likes the color of your shirt or that he loves you. Your heart has no choice but to burst in joy, basking in his sweet gaze.

The intensity of living with both of them among all these gorgeous, cherished moments would be too much to experience for mere humans. The Universe knows this, so along with the love note handed to me on brightly-colored, crumpled construction paper and the “heart” made out of fuzzy pipe cleaners wadded into a ball lovingly tucked into my backpack pocket, and all the snuggles and hugs, they have both been delightedly egging each other on to increasingly higher levels of potty mouth.

My son and his wife have tried ignoring, scolding, and explaining, but it’s a too-compelling rush for the 3-5-year-old set to refer to everything as “Farty Pants.” So there has been a lot of Farty Pants-ing by this duo the last couple of days. Levels their parents could not imagine nor ignore. As a grandparent, I have a backseat to the drama, so I got to walk around, bemused, as this adorable baby cheerfully yelled, “Farty Pants!” while pounding repeatedly as hard as he could on bright, red START buttons that do not start, while feeling a bit envious of his ability to unabashedly do what he wanted.

My son gets the boys to sit still long enough on the vinyl booth seats to remind them that we don’t say Farty Pants in public if we want to have our tablets later. He gets them both to acknowledge what he’s saying and they sagely nod and say, “Yes, Dad,” in unison. We order something called Liquid Death that turns out to be canned water, sporting the font and flames from a Hot Topic button-up from the 1990s worn by Guy Fieri, and chicken nuggets and fries, which are two of the only foods the older one eats, along with a side of ranch, which the younger one will delightfully shotgun by the end of the meal, leaving a giant smear of ranch across the bridge of his nose.

The waitress says, “I’ll get that right out to you.” And my grandson looks at her with his big, sweet smile and says, “Thank you, Farty Pants!”

~.~.~

The flight home feels shorter. I have the row to myself so instead of worrying about how I’m being perceived, I watch stupid streaming shows on my phone instead of the news, but the news catches up to me about fifteen minutes before we land when the voice over the speakers tells us that a Pro-Palestine protest shut down the freeway near the airport and we might be delayed getting picked up. I support the protest and I’m glad it happened. Being slightly delayed being picked up feels like an incredibly small price to pay compared to the genocide thats happening. Not everyone on my flight agrees with me and I quickly learn that several people in the rows near me have a very different view of what’s happening in Gaza.

One of the most vocal people is a brunette woman directly across the aisle from me, who begins making loud phone calls as soon as the wheels touch the ground, to a parade of people we can’t hear. By the tone of her half of the conversations, they must all be as outraged as she is. I roll my eyes to myself when she says for the fourth time, to the fourth person, “if this makes me late for the dinner with Scott tonight I’m going to be furious.”

People jump up when we roll up to the gate to stand awkwardly in the isles, heads tilted to the side to avoid getting banged by the opening overhead compartments. When it gets to be my turn, I stand up at the same time as the very vocal woman. She sticks a leg into the aisle, then stops short as I hoist my backpack over my shoulder, impatiently gesturing that I could go first. I shake my head, also gesturing, and say, “No, you go.” I know my knees need to unfold after a couple of hours of being cramped and walking will be painful and slow. The last thing I want is an impatient, rude, and annoyed person pushing at the rear.

She exasperatedly throws both hands up and says, “Ok,” grabbing her bags and hustling out.

“But, thank you,” I throw after her, which she does not acknowledge or maybe even hear, and under my breath I add, “Farty Pants.”

—Previously posted on Substack