Co-written by Victor G.
A special thanks to Victor G who co-wrote 'A Mother's Love' at Sapphire's site. Vic has a litterary way of making a boy look as if he walked out of the pages of a fashion magazine. He's a fantastic solo writer and I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to write this story with him. Now for a little info about the story.

Darren Peterman is a 16 year old high school football player who is at odds with his feminine side. As the title suggests, Darren's mother is his role model.

This story explores Darren's feelings as well as his family's as they struggle to define Darren's identity and gender. What would you think, do, and feel, if your parents told you they understood? Darren will try to answer those questions for himself and I suspect it will take more than a couple chapters.

******

I had just gotten home from football practice when my mother called me into the kitchen. My little brother Sammy sat on the couch watching TV. He was 11 and in the 6th grade, and like most young kids, he looked up to his older brother. I was his hero, and he gave me an enthusiastic high five as I walked past him.

"Hey bro. How was practice?" he asked.

I told him about a pretty spectacular - if I say so myself - catch I made in double coverage, then broke a tackle and sprinted down the field to score a touchdown. Sammy's eyes lit up as I described the play.

"Man, I can't wait until I get to high school and can play ball like you," Sammy said.

I roughed up his hair and punched him on the shoulder affectionately. "You'll get there, squirt. Don't be in such a hurry to grow up. In the meantime, how about we toss around the football after dinner?"

Sammy grinned at my suggestion. "Cool!" he said.

My mother yelled from the kitchen again. "Darren, are you coming? I really need to talk to you!"

"Yeah Mom, be right there. I was talking to Sammy."

I made my way to the kitchen and found my mother sitting at the nearby computer table. She was still wearing her office clothes, a very stylish burgundy suit and calf-length skirt ensemble she'd bought at Nordstrom's. Normally, she'd have changed out of her work clothes immediately, so whatever she had to talk to me about must have weighed heavily on her mind.

"So, what's up?" I asked, kissing her on the head in greeting, trying to assess the situation.

She paused a moment, gathering her thoughts before replying. "There's just some things I've been wanting to talk to you about," she said. She picked up her box of Marlboro Lights 100s, flipped open the top, and pulled out a cigarette. She put the cigarette to her mouth and lit it with the gold lighter my dad had gotten her for her birthday last year. She took a deep drag, exhaled, then spun around to face me.

"I don't know of any easy way to say this," she said hesitantly, "So I'll just spit it out."

The look on her face was pained and I was sure she was going to tell me something about my dad, like maybe the two of them were getting a divorce. I braced myself for the bad news.

"Is... everything okay with you Dad?" I asked.

Mom chuckled slightly and nodded. "Of course, honey. Your dad and I are fine. In fact, I thought about waiting for him to get home before I talked to you, but I think for now it's probably best to keep this between the two of us."

I was relieved my parents weren't getting getting a divorce but I had to admit my mother was beginning to make me nervous.

"Did I mess up or do something wrong?" I asked.

Mom's eyes softened and she shook her head. "Oh no, sweetheart," she replied gently. "It's nothing like that. You're not in any trouble if that's what you're worried about."

"Then what's the matter?" I asked.

My mother took a puff from her cigarette and inhaled deeply to steady herself. There was an odd look on her face, a mixture of concern, confusion, and love.

"Are you happy, Darren? Is anything bothering you? Anything you'd like to talk about at all?"

This was weird. What brought this on, I wondered. I shrugged, hoping to ease her worries. "I'm fine, Mom, why? Did you think I was getting bullied or something? I'm not the biggest guy on the team, but I am a football player. I can take care of myself."

She smiled gently. "No, of course not. I was thinking about something else and it's just a lot harder to talk about than I thought it would be."

I pulled over a chair from the dining room table and sat down next to her. I gripped her hand reassuringly.

"Well, if this is about drugs, then you and Dad can relax because I'm not taking them and I don't want to take them. I'm okay, really, and everything is fine."

My mother took a long drag on her cigarette and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. She stared at the lit end of her cigarette for a moment, then leveled her eyes at mine. "Darren, I really want to talk to you about this, but it's so hard to say. It's like the words are there but they're stuck in my throat."

I felt a surge of fear. Oh no, something's wrong. Mom's sick. I squeezed her hand a little tighter.

"Just say it, Mom," I whispered, preparing for the worst.

My mother looked at me with her confused, pained eyes and said, "Your father and I know that you're still dressing up in my clothes and that you want to be a woman."

I let go of her hand and sat back in my chair, stunned into silence. Mom took another deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled.

"There, I said it!" she said, sounding relieved. "Now it's out and we can talk about it."

I jumped to my feet and immediately denied her allegations. Purely out of instinct, because she was right and I was deeply ashamed. Yes, I had been wearing my mother's clothes, but I wasn't ready to admit to myself or anyone else that I really wanted to be a woman. Sure, I thought about it. As a matter of fact, I thought about it constantly, but I always wrote it off as some weird fantasy. Fantasies aren't supposed to come true. That's what makes them different than goals and aspirations. I certainly didn't aspire to be a woman. I was happy being a boy. I had a good life as a boy and I certainly wasn't gay.

No, I wasn't gay. I'd never been with another boy and didn't fantasize about being with other boys. However, I often fantasized about being a woman, and as that woman, I also fantasized about having sex a man. Passionate, amazing sex, where I was beautiful and alluring and he was a handsome, caring, well-endowed partner. I didn't think of that as being gay. It just meant that my two most detailed, erotic fantasies went together. Naturally, like peanut butter and jelly.

"I found some things on the computer, Darren," Mom said. "I also found that box in your closet."

I put on my poker face but I somehow knew my mother could see right through it. The box she was talking about had lingerie in it - my mother's lingerie, things she was going to throw out, but I had rescued and kept for myself. It also had some of her old women's magazines in it, ones containing articles that helped me learn some of the secrets of being a woman. Stuff like makeup tips and fashion advice, things I couldn't possibly learn as a teenaged football player.

The stuff on the computer could have been anything, there was a lot there that could incriminate me. I thought I'd covered my tracks, but I guess not. I'd looked at a lot of transsexual sites and had downloaded tons of pictures and stories - both real and fictitious - about men posing as or being turned into women.

I had even taken my fantasies out into the real world and had been posing as an older woman on an Internet dating site. I had doctored some photos of myself to appear as an attractive, middle-aged woman and had created an entire fake identity and history for "her." I had a few responses to my ad, and was communicating with a couple of handsome men while posing as this woman, but of course I hadn't met any of them in real life yet. So far, it was just innocent online flirting.

Any one of those things was bad enough, but combined together they were like a nuclear bomb. I told her I didn't know what she meant about the computer. "Maybe Sammy did it. He uses the computer too."

Mom crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray in frustration.

"Darren, I'm trying to be understanding about this so please don't lie. Not now. I know it was you. Or should I say 'Nancy Peterman'? Who is she?"

I groaned and slumped down into my chair. Nancy Peterman was the woman I was posing as on the dating site. "She's nobody," I said. "I just made her up."

"I know you did. But where did you get the pictures? Did you do your own make-up when you made those pictures?"

I told my mother about a website that morphed photographs. "I just uploaded some face shots of my self and typed in the age and gender I wanted to look like."

"They look very real. You make a very pretty woman," my mother said.

What was I supposed to do - thank her for the compliment? I wiped at my eyes and stared at the floor, unable to meet her gaze.

I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me as my mother told me about the bookmarks she found. "I found the sites where you've been researching sex change surgeries," she said. "And the folders where you've been downloading pictures and stories. I found stories about boys who magically get turned into their mothers. I also found a bunch of pictures of older women."

All I could do was just stand there silently in shame. What was there to say?

Mom gently placed a finger under my chin and lifted it so that she could look me in the eye. We both had tears in our eyes as she spoke.

"Please explain something to me. The profile on your dating site says 'Nancy' is 46. Is that what you want? To be a middle-aged woman?"

Mom had found everything. The nuclear bomb had detonated in my face and destroyed my whole life. I couldn't make up some lie and explain it away because it wasn't the first time something like this had happened. I'd been dressing up in my mother's clothes for most of my life and I'd been caught more times than I can remember. Each time I got caught, I would swear up and down that it was the last time I'd do it and I'd get punished. In addition to the punishment, my parents let me know how disappointed and ashamed they were of me. I guess that was the worst part, dealing with the disappointment and shame. Not only from them, but from myself. But soon enough, I'd be back in my mother's clothes again, dreaming of being a woman, and again I'd get caught. And each time, I told her I was sorry and I wouldn't do it again, but I always came back for more. I couldn't help myself. No amount of punishment or verbal abuse or shame could keep me from exploring my fantasies and my mother's closet.

I just nodded silently, trying hard to keep the tears from flowing.

Mom smiled sadly and caressed my cheek lovingly. "I'm not mad at you, honey," she said. "And neither is your father. I didn't call you into the kitchen to embarrass you or punish you. I called you in here because I wanted to tell you that your father and I have talked about this and we don't want to make you stop. We tried that and it didn't work. And it will never work because you can't help yourself and we understand that now."

My mother sighed and lit another cigarette. "Your father and I want to help you, Darren. We know how much pain this is causing you and we want you to be happy. So we're going to help you become the woman you desperately want to be."

The bomb had blown up in my face and I wasn't dead but I wanted to die. Why was she saying these things to me? Did she expect me to be happy? I was so embarrassed and ashamed, it wanted to crawl under a rock and die. I pleaded with her to forget the whole thing and I told her that I didn't want to be a woman.

"But you do want to be a woman, Darren. You know it and your father and I know it and we've always known it - all of us have. We've just been in denial all this time. We tried to stop it from happening and that was wrong of us. Look at how unhappy it's making you!"

I shook my head in disbelief. "How can you say that?" I asked. "After everything you both said and did! How can you say it's all right now?"

"Your father and I went back and spoke to Dr. Girardi. Do you remember her?"

Of course I remembered her. She was the doctor my parents took me to see when I kept breaking my promises to stay out of my mother's closet. She specializes in gender disorders.

"We told her about your stuff on the computer. As a matter of fact, we even showed it to her. Your dad brought our computer to her office while you and Sammy were in school. She told us that what you've been going through isn't a phase and that we should help you. She even gave us the name of a doctor who can help with cosmetic surgery."

My hands instinctively went to cover my genitals. "You mean sex change surgery?"

"No, you're too young for that, but you could have cosmetic surgery on your face and give you breast implants. She can help you look like a woman. Except for your penis, but you can always hide that away."

"I don't understand, Mom. You want me to do this?"

"Only if you want it. In the meantime, to get you started living as a woman, Dr. Girardi said we should start you off by having you dress as a woman."

I grew excited at this prospect. "Yeah? How so?" I asked, my voice perking up.

My mother noticed the slight change in my demeanor and smiled. "Well, for starters, there's body padding to give you a more curvy, womanly body shape. And extensive make-up and a wig and some women's clothes. And later, if you want to go further, Dr. Lipscomb can do the cosmetic surgery to make things more permanent. The upside is that you wouldn't have to wait until you're 18. Dr. Lipscomb can do that anytime, but of course we're not pushing it that far just yet."

I was confused and intrigued at the same time. "So Dr. Girardi says I can look like a woman without getting any surgery, but I can still get the surgery if I try out the padding and the makeup and the clothes and I like it?"

"That's right," my mother said, "but it's not entirely simple. You have to be at least 18 before a doctor will make your penis into a vagina."

I had read extensively online about what it would take to turn me into a woman. But since I'd always wanted to be so much older, I never thought it would be possible. I nodded in understanding, and told my mother I had read about what was required for sex reassignment surgery.

Mom smiled gently in reply. "I thought so. Then you know that you have to live as a woman for at least a year before a doctor would even consider giving you total gender reassignment surgery."

I had been quite thorough in my research. I told her I knew that too.

"Okay then," my mother said. "That's why you might want to have Dr. Lipscomb do the cosmetic surgery next summer. You'll be 17 by then. Then you could have over a year of physically living as a woman before you turn 18. I think that would make it easier to get the remaining surgery then."

"So are you saying I should try out the body padding now, see what its like living as a woman until the summer and have the cosmetic surgery if I want it?"

"I think it would be a good idea," my mother said. "That way, if you decide being a woman really isn't what you want, you can just quit wearing the padding and the clothes. You'd have 7 months to decide if you want to get the breast and hip implants and facial surgery. Plus you'd have all that time to see what being a woman's really all about. It's not just clothes and hair and makeup. There's more to being a woman than just looking pretty."

"What about hormones?" I asked.

A serious expression crept over my mother's face. "Lets not get too far ahead of ourselves, but yes. Once you get into this, if you decided that you really want to be a woman, then it would definitely be in your best interest to begin female hormone therapy as soon as possible."

I was stunned and out of my mind with everything I had absorbed. "You're seriously giving me your permission to be a woman?" I asked.

"Yes, honey. That's what I'm saying."

"And Dad is okay with this?"

"He is, but he thought it would be better if I talked to you about it. I think it makes him a little uncomfortable. He's not sure what to say, even though he does want to help you."

"What about Sammy?" I asked.

"He doesn't know, so we'll have to tell him if you decide you want to do this."

"So this padding and make-up thing would only be temporary, right?" I asked. "I'd only wear it on the weekends and when I got home from school?"

"And school holidays, if you like."

"What about in the summer, if I get the cosmetic surgery? I can't go back to school with boobs."

"Your father and I were thinking you could get your G.E.D. instead of going back to school. It would be the same thing as a diploma and some colleges accept them if you want to go to college."

I tried to take it all in, wondering just what was in store for me. My mother could see how much I was taken in by it all. She took a drag on her cigarette and exhaled.

"So, what do you think? You don't have to make up your mind right now, but I am curious about your first impression."

My body tingled with anticipation as I tried to form my thoughts into words. The first thing I asked myself is if I wanted to do this. Of course the answer was yes! A thousand times yes! A part of me knew that I didn't have anything to lose because, apparently, I had my parent's support. But another, uncertain part of me said that I had everything to lose. And finally, I wasn't entirely sure if my mother and I were truly on the same page. I took a deep breath and held it until I was ready to speak. I wanted to make sure Mom knew exactly what it was that I wanted.

"Mom," I said carefully choosing each word that I said, making certain my meaning was clear, "When you're talking about helping me to be a woman, did you mean me being a teenage girl or an adult woman like you?"

My mother smiled and laughed. "Oh Darren, I'm not going to sit here and pretend I understand why you want to be a woman, much less a woman my age, but I'm not going to short-change your dream. I know exactly what you want. So yes honey, your father and I want to help you become a middle-aged woman. Is that what you wanted to hear me say?"

I was completely overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. I leaned over and hugged her tightly. "Yes, Mom! That's just what I wanted to hear you say! It's exactly what I want! I've dreamed about this for so long!"

Mom stroked my short, boyish hair reassuringly.

"I know it is, honey. I've already talked to Brenda at my salon and she said she'd be thrilled to help us in any way she can. I showed her your school pictures and the ones from your dating site. She said that it wouldn't be any problem at all for her to make you look as if you're at least 45 years old and match the woman in the pictures. she also said that with your facial features, you'll make a gorgeous older woman."

I tried to subdue my enthusiasm, not wanting Mom to know how eager I was to stop being Darren - her son - for a while, but inside I was totally thrilled. My hands trembled with excitement at the thought of looking like a gorgeous older woman. Not only looking like one, but getting to live as one as well.

This is really happening, I thought. Nancy Peterman is really going to come to life, and I'm going to get to be her! I thought about the stylish outfits I'd get to wear, of having flawless makeup and hair (even if it would be a wig). I realized I'd get to go out in public as the attractive, mature Nancy, with no one knowing I was really a plain, unassuming teenaged boy.

I thought about how'd I'd look and act as an adult woman, what habits Nancy might have that Darren didn't. Since she was 46, Nancy would have an array of adult habits. Some good, some bad. She could easily drink and even smoke, and no one would condemn her the way they would Darren for doing the same.

And... dates! "Nancy" could finally get to go out on dates! With a handsome man treating me like a lady, holding open doors for me, telling me I'm beautiful, maybe even kissing me... The idea of dating men both repulsed and excited me. It was wrong and went against my nature, but the thought of a man being attentive to me was very alluring. I knew in my heart that I'd never go past first base with a man, but getting there could be fun. What was first base- holding hands? Flirting? Maybe a little kissing?

"Darren," Mom said, snapping me out of my reverie. Fortunately, she didn't notice the sizable erection that had appeared in my jeans. I sat down quickly so she didn't notice.

"There's something very important that you need to understand," she continued, "There's much, much more to being a middle-aged woman than just wearing a dress and having boobs and wrinkles. You're going to need to learn how to dress and act the part if you expect to live a happy and fulfilling life as a woman."

"You can teach me. Can't you, Mom?" I asked excitedly.

My mother leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. I could smell her expensive perfume and makeup mixed in with a faint whiff of her cigarette smoke. It smelled like a classy, sophisticated adult woman, and I couldn't wait to smell like that.

"Of course I will," Mom replied, wiping a faint lipstick mark from my cheek. "I'll help you with everything you need to know to become 'Nancy' in real life. How to move like a woman, how to talk like a woman, how to pick out a smart outfit. Things a woman Nancy's age should know. It's going to be a lot of work. Think you're up for it?"

I grinned. "Of course, Mom! I can't wait to get started!"

"Then lets start by telling Sammy. Just be honest with him, he'll understand. Then you can study up with my Woman's Day and Ladies Home Journal magazines. I have plenty of back copies to keep you busy."

The idea of reading my mother's women's magazines without fear of retribution thrilled me beyond explanation.

"In the meantime, I'll make an appointment for you with Brenda at the salon on Saturday. Tomorrow, while you're at school, I'll buy you some clothes to wear to the appointment. Afterwards, we can spend the whole day shopping. You're going to need a new wardrobe. We'll make it a girls' day out!"

I started crying again because I was so happy. I thanked her again and again and told her it was the best day of my life.