We’re Seahorses — Transgender Parents — Leaving Idaho Behind.
I was born here, but we can’t stay.
My parents moved to a five-acre farm in rural Southern Idaho in 1993. I was born four years later. My brother and I explored since-developed fields and jumped over muddy ditches and taunted the electric fence with blades of grass. Goatheads on our soles like walking on angry peas. Owls hoo’d. Cattle huddled beneath corrugated canopy until morning. When it dawned, Fudge the cow half-glowed, so I ran my little-kid paws all across their orange fuzzy flank to say good morning!
The memories survive, but the Gem State is tapped. I must prospect more distant peaks for my son to enjoy what I had.
For as long as I knew it was a thing (see: this mortal coil), I hated the idea that we have just one life. Herein pressured to commit to one manner for the rest of it. There’s already so much we couldn’t control to get to today. How odd to do with what little time I can choose, what others say? How odd not to make my own self mine each precious day?
How could I deny my family the same?
English does its best to model the world, but it‘s merely a model. Until it catches up, I’ve come to a personal truce that mundane naivete need not cripple my internal powers of self-assertion. Truth outlasts such…
