I wrote earlier about how I found out my name. More than 50 years passed before I began using that name, Kathleen. When my transgender began to emerge in my late teens, I didn’t like the name. Or rather, I didn’t like the fact that mom told me what my name was supposed to be.
I moved out of my parents’ home and got my own apartment in 1972 or ‘73, so I was able to experiment a little more. Back then, instead of HotMail or AOL accounts, we had Post Office boxes, to exchange anonymous snail mail with people whose addresses we found in the back of slick magazines from the adult bookstore. I wasn’t yet ready for piercings and bondage, so the Virginia Prince Tri-ESS stuff seemed to be about my speed. After exchanging a few letters with people in Tri-ESS, it was clear that I was a novice because I didn’t have a “femme name”.
Having a separate name for dressing up seemed bizarre at the time, but I went along with it. What name to use? I felt at the time that if I were to use the name Kathleen, it would be capitulating to mom’s whim, wish, or daydream — whatever it was. I was not going to do that: I was not going to wear women’s clothes because mom wanted me to. I was going to wear them because I wanted to.
Frank Sinatra’s song, Nancy with the Laughing Face, was popular around then. I liked the song, so I chose the name Nancy. I was known as Nancy from about 1973 till 2002 or 2003.
I finally accepted mom’s name for me because of this incident. A female coworker was pregnant with her second child. One day, she was chatting on the phone with a friend. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop; it’s just that I wasn’t deep into anything at my own desk, so I happened to overhear. The coworker had just had the ultrasound checkup where they are able to identify the sex of the fetus. She was talking to her girlfriend about it, but of course, she said, she already knew it was going to be a girl. I heard her say, “A mother always knows.”
There was something in the tone of her voice that brought mom’s words back to me. Mom used to use that exact tone of voice. It then occurred to me that mom just might have known even before my birth that I was transgendered. Not that she would have used that word, of course. Mom carried me 5 or 6 years before news of Christine Jorgensen’s famous sex change hit the glossy magazines.
Suppose mom really did know that she was carrying a transsexual, but didn’t have the words for it. What might she have said to convey the same thought? She might have said, “You were supposed to be a girl.”
All this came back to me in a flash when I heard my coworker talking. As I said, I wasn’t eavesdropping, and I haven’t the slightest idea what the rest of her conversation contained. I think the Holy Spirit wanted me to hear her words; I think I needed to hear those words.
I know, I know….. It’s much more likely that mom really wanted a girl, so she made up the story. Well, whatever. Mom died in 1996, and I never spoke to her about my life as a woman, or about the name she gave me.
This is a fact: as I began to use the name Kathleen, my identity as Kathleen slowly became more distinct. It culminated in my transition in December, 2007, and my surgery in March, 2009.
Thank you, mom. One of the biggest regrets of my life is that you never got to meet the daughter you knew you should have had.