the Snow Globe (x-posted)

[tay-en-pointe.livejournal.com]

this post is about a conversation with my mother. i just wrote it. maybe it will help someone feel better about their own situation, regarding acceptance by their parents. that's the only reason i'm posting this here. thanks.

So, after that last post, i get a phonecall from dishgirl. i know the number on sight, but i haven't actually added her into my phonebook info. so after we talk i do, and i add a few other numbers i know but haven't typed the names into. and as i'm doing this, i scroll across the name of my mother. i stare at it for a moment. i decide, what the hell, and push send.
As a literalist, someone for whom words have very specific meanings, its a bitch being the offspring of a woman named Hope.

She picks up on the second ring, and i say hi, and she says hello like we talked last week, not four or five months ago. asks how i am. how's work. i tell her its good, that its Mardi Gras. "oh, i thought that was in March," she says.
um.. no.
I keep on the smile, so she can hear it. i listen to her talk about her trip to Panama, ("That they could think of such a thing is amazing, but that they actually did it.. oh!") and Seattle.
She asks about my trip to Dallas, which was back in October. i am elusive of course, stayed with friends, etc. an evil part of me really wants to say, "Oh, it was incredible, the Rough Body Play seminar really opened up a whole new kink for me, and the Dungeon the party was at! that they could think of such a thing is amazing..."etc.
I dont of course. my mission, having chosen to accept it, is to be nice, affable, friendly. it should be easy, keeping it superficial. i mean, that's how this woman maintains her most successful relationships.
This is a woman to whom life is a snow globe. You know, one of those globes with a small plastic scene of some kind inside, with a clear thick fluid that preserves it, and you shake it up and down and the glitter inside, it looks like snow. My mom has constructed of her life a snow globe. Except she doesnt like the snow. if you pick it up and shake it and make it snow, you'll make her mad. My mom has survived her life by building for her snow globe a large glass and wooden case, with a lock and key to keep grubby childish hands from reaching, grabbing, and even gently shaking it, causing a low drift swirl within the globe. if you try to shake the globe, she turns her back on you, and crawls into the large glass and wooden case, and she locks herself in until you go away.
She talks about some people she's recently seen, some of whom i've never met, but in her mind, i've known them all my life, because my life is her life, and vice versa in the snow globe cabinet of her world. she talks about a friend of hers, and her husband, a TV hack producer. "Well, you know, he did that show, "Xxxx---," i'm sure you didnt see it, its not your kind of thing. He was mad at me when i told him i hated it. He's working on something new now, but he wont tell me about it."
She was sincerely confused as to why he wouldn't.
A year ago, this would have been enough to make me bristle, to make me want to act like her, to make me want to point out her flaws, which would of course bring on a the first kindling sparks of a raging argument between us. I'd like to think i've grown up some since then, so i keep a smile on my face--people can hear it on a phone when you smile, even digitally--and mumble something about not really having cable these days.
She asks about my writing. I say i'm working on it. "I thought you said you'd be done by now," she says.
"I'm trying not to rush it."
I know its coming. i know the signs, they are so familiar, they are laughable now. she's telling me about her friends, adults who i liked and looked up to when i was a child and even a teen (except for the ones i never met; she seems to have lost that part of time when i actually moved out), and telling me they say hello, because she's been telling them about me. telling them what i dont know, or dont really care, but i know what's coming. my transition isn't my struggle. She's told people, over the past several years, and they've responded with, "that's very brave of him, um.. her," or something like that. its easy to say when its not your offspring, i suppose. so now, through the responses of her friends, i've been redeemed, made brave in her eyes.
The psychology of it's so simple its almost laughable, really. which is why i keep on with the superficial all cool smile into the phone.
"So," she says, "how is your transition going?"
"It's going well, i guess. I'm not quite where i want to be, but i'm working on it."
"What do you look like now?"
"Um.. sorry?"
"Do you look like a man, or do you look like a woman?" In another generation, and gender, she would have made a brilliant courtroom lawyer, sugar sweet voice coating the most direct cross-exams.
"A little of both," i say. "Sometimes i still get called Sir. Sometimes i get called Miss.. or Ma'am."
"Is it where you want to be?"
"No," i admit. "I'm still a ways from there."
"It takes lots of therapy," she says.
I sigh. This is a simple misconception, even within the TG community. Where i want to be has nothing to do with my penis. "It's not that," i say. "Not yet. I know that's a ways down the road. I just want to live full time. Lose the Sirs, and gain the Ma'ams."
"Well," she says. "What are you going to do about it?"

That's the button. That, right there. Did you see it? Did you hear the ice flow through the frosting? Did you notice that after says there is a period, putting an abrupt ending to the "Well", and giving a significant pause that adds directness to the following interrogative?

a year ago, i would have missed it. even six months ago, i would have let this button get pushed. as is, i do let it affect my tone, let it allow me to adopt some of the chill as my own.
"I'm working on it."
I hear her inhale, i know she's going to now start asking how, what am i doing, why is it taking so long, when can she send out caligraphied announcement cards telling the world she has a very special daughter.
Before she can, though, i say, "A parade's rolling up the street. I have to meet some friends."
"Well, nice to hear from you," she says. Just that quick the chill is gone.
"Yeah. You too."
"Enjoy your Mardi Gras," she says.
and i say, "Take care. Bye."
i wait for her to say bye as well, before i break the connection.
ps. the show mentioned in the cut, that she hated? i thought it was brilliant, but i have to protect the name of the producer friend.