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Chapter 56

*Before…

Y’know before…the crowd cheering was just a kind of a meh thing…I never really connected fully with the emotional stuff back then before I transitioned and now with Taylor and Giselle cheering me on it feels just…

It feels exactly like they’re cheering. “Yay Mommy…!”

I’m swallowing a lump and happy tears as I get a big roll of tickets from the guy at the booth and I go over to him and her and slip into this really awesome double hug and this three way head rub.

*And Now…

It’s really, really cool having that kind of a moment and it’s so much fun seeing Giselle having such a good time too. Dad and Taylor are with here while Angie has gone ahead to the pool waterpark area to get set up ahead of us and maybe to have some alone time for a few minutes and Hunter’s with me and I’m pushing Ingrid with the chair.

“It’s really cool seeing her having fun.”

Ingrid sort of looks at me like she’s trying to see if I meant something by that, I know the look she had it with a whole lot of people when we were in school. She looks back to Giselle with a semi-sad and semi-mad look on her face.

“I effed that up…I have no idea what the hell I’m doing.”

“Not like you had a choice.”

“No, no I didn’t…”…………………. “You…you’re a better mom, you’re giving her that choice.”

“I’m just winging it too.”

“Really it doesn’t look it…you look like you were made for it.”

“Thanks Iggy.”

“I was complaining.”

“I’m not taking it as one.”

“Grrr… (Yes she said grrr) why the heck are you little Mary Sunshine all the time?”

“Because I’m me.”

“Pffft…” She does that raspberry thing.

“No I’m serious, when I was just being Jaime I wasn’t really anyone…it was all just Do…it wasn’t Be…I couldn’t make any connection to myself as a person. I was Jaime and Jaime was supposed to do this and that but Jaime’s never really felt anything. Not until I started having a clue that I never really was him. I’m just happy now that I’m me and I’m getting on with my life even after the bad stuff.”

We have this moment where my bad stuff is meeting her bad stuff eye to eye and we’ve not done this a whole lot but she sort of looks away and she nods. I guess it’s a lot harder to hold that thing that you’re mad at someone about close when that person is right there in front of you and you’ve done stuff that hurt them too.

No I don’t hate her but…

Okay…I might not be transitioning later in life and had to live another life and hide as that guy and all of that stuff but if not for an adventurous ex… I would have. I would have been Jaime until it killed me one way or another.

But here’s that whole but thing.

Ingrid and I have a past and while it’s not like a marriage and stuff and we don’t have grown children…and she resents that I’m straight…that I moved on.

People have to deal.

They just have too and you or I can’t make them and they can cry and be upset all they want or even have to….and they will.

But I have a right to be me.

And for me even deeper I have a responsibility to be me. I mean I never asked to be transgender, I never asked for any of this and No one that goes through this chooses this. It doesn’t go away no matter how much you hide it and it’s just something that is part of you as much as anything else.

For me…I have a responsibility to follow God’s plan. I mean if he made me like this then he did so for a reason. And all that reason has to be…in my mind is that he thinks that I’m a beautiful girl.

But I’m kinda of religious so there is that part of that with what I think. But there’s still an ethical thing here too.

Just look at the world…just look at the bad things that happen, all the suffering and all the misery and all the missed chances.

It’s not right to have a chance to be happy, really and actually happy in my life, in my heart and in my own skin…and it’s not right to not take that chance. It sounds messed up but some of us that do…we show others it can be…that the chance is real.

And there’s the awesome side effect of once you start to discover who you really are that all sorts of things come loose inside and all sorts of new things take root.

I used to be a football jock, and I knew that and some other sports stuff and I can do okay fixing a lawnmower engine but now.

I’m a decent cook, I’m a good baker and that’s something I’m really into, I love kids, and I want to be a mom…and it’s important for me to be a good mom. I found out that family is more than blood and that loving someone who loves you back is more amazing than anything.

And there’s so, so much more to come too.

And even if I was older I’d still think this way, still do this because life’s not done until it’s done. Until god looks down at me and says “Enough…Jenna come home.” I’m in it for that full ride scary stuff and pain and all.

I mean…even as I’m slowly walking and pushing Ingrid and thinking of all of this stuff I’m looking at Giselle and there’s this distant future that when she’s older and has some one she loves I’ll get to hold this little bundle of love and get called Grandma.

I have older online friends…that…that right there…all it would take is just someone that loves you enough to look past transition or love you despite it and have someone pass that bundle to you saying Auntie, Nan, Godmum, Grandma…Grams...Wouldn’t all the waiting all the time missed be worth it?

Would just maybe having been there yourself be important for family that might come out of the closet? Transition themselves… I know that I’d have taken my cousin Angel in without even thinking about it?

I say be yourself, fight, live, stick around because we never know who will need us just the way we really are.

And I’m going to stop musing now because the girls are looking at me.

“Earth to Jenna…why are you smiling like that?” Ingrid asks.

“Day dreaming sort of.”

“About what?”

“Giselle and her being grown up and stuff…being a grandmother.”

She looks at me like I’m either insane or retarded.

“Why?”

“Because it’s one of those things that I think about since she came into my life. Like what if one of the reasons why is that.”

“To be old and be a grandparent?”

I just shrug but grin and nod while I’m doing it. “Yep pretty much.”

“You’re goddamned weird.”

“No, I have a life Iggy and I fought like hell to get out of my dark place for it and y’know you can do that too.”

“You’re not dying.” She has a sour face on now.

I lean over the chair to look at her. “No? I had a bottle of pills and that would have killed me just as sure as this cancer will if you don’t fight through it.”

She looks at me a little shocked. “You tried?”

“Heck yes! Look when I was at my lowest point I was nearly gone. It would have just been so easy to do it and never wake up in pain from just fighting tooth and nail to just be me and live my life. All of this…I had no clue that anything like this was possible, that I could have something as precious as this and YOU don’t know what can happen either.”

“But…but…” She actually looks a little flustered at the stuff I said.

“Yeah it might require you to get off of that.” I smile and I even give her a peck on the cheek and I go over to where Hunter is and she just won herself a bunch of tickets and I grin at her and wrap an arm around her and then go get Iggy and wheel after the guys.

I love see Dad and Taylor with Giselle at this jungle gym maze ball pit thingy and I can’t help but to grin and take my camera out and stuff as Dad and Taylor are doing the Daddy stuff with her and they’re on their hands and knees going through the thing with her keeping an eye on her like some of the other parents are…well mostly the moms they are the only two guys there and I smile at just how much fun they’re having.

Well sort of Taylor looks like a guy in cramped spaces and yet he’s trying and Dad…

Dad’s right in his glory, he’d Grampy and he’s also old enough that he just doesn’t care about looking cool and he will just sort of older guy lean on everything but at the same time he’s right there with her every time she does something.

I’m so recording this on my camera too…every Squeal and laugh and “Daddie!” and “Gwampy!” it’s all just more than awesome.

And I wave when she goes down the slide and sees me and waves. “Mum!”

She waves back as she’s sinking in the balls of the ball pit and I nudge Iggy. “Wave she called to you too.”

Ingrid waves back and there’s a small bit of this sort of apprehensive smile there.

We watch for a while and Dad comes over and he looks at me. “Spot me?” He takes the camera and gives it to Ingrid and she looks at him. He gives her this nod and I head into the crowd and the playset and join Taylor in playing with her or rather escorting her through the playset and watching her and cheering her on.

It’s kind of amusing in a very girl/woman way when some of the women there figure out that Taylor’s with me.

Yeeeah that’s right he’s mine.

It’s funny that until I showed up that the ring he has really wasn’t that much of a deterrent and it’s a little vain of me but I am actually enjoying the basking of being a married woman.

It just makes my heart melt a little too as Giselle stops all of a sudden and she reaches out for Tay and he gets her and picks her up and she does this really big yawn and she’s out like a puppy falling asleep.

Little kids are kid of awesome like that.

He carries her and we stop and we get the prizes from the ticket cash in thing and most of it’s junk but little stuffies and cheesy toys and cheap costume jewelry are just the right stuff for Giselle who wakes up at the mention of toys and Hunter who’s still at that age where all that stuff is still cheesy and yet still pretty cool.

We are all talking and having a good time and eating from a bag of cotton candy dad got somewhere all the way to the water park.

I really, really needed this…I look at Dad who got to claim stuff he lost with me and Taylor who is still being daddy and he’s getting cotton candy little blue hand prints on his face from Giselle and that makes me fall in love with him just a little bit more and even Ingrid who’s recording it because it’s going everywhere but into his mouth.