Kin
Pride on the Page Day #16
Each of the mini-essays I’m publishing for the month of June are part of a creative challenge to share joy during Pride. You can find out more in the link below. You can even participate, if you’d like!
Wild Lion*esses Pride from Jay
Today’s piece is a repost from a while back. It’s also a skosh late for father’s day, but it fit today’s theme well.
16. Kin
Father’s Day can be such a tangled feeling for many transgender folx, but certainly for those of us who are trans men, transmasculine types, transmasc, nonbinary, third gender, and so many more variations that add to our beauty as humans. I hold, in reverence, those of my brothers and siblings who have (or may) become fathers, through choice or circumstance, and who feel the complexity of that relationship with ourselves and our families.
Don’t All Fathers
Don’t all fathers wire themselves like the lightbulb in the fridge open the door, here we are at the ready how about a carrot? Don’t all fathers hide our nurturing instincts playing house as little girls insisting we are “the dad” each time Don’t all fathers worry that menopause will make us irrelevant or just more wobbly in the middle Don’t all fathers know the feeling of an unborn foot jammed straight into our 10th rib and murmur “eviction notice” to our rounded bellies but hide our tears not long after at the first sleepover away from home Don’t all fathers marvel at the softness of baby eyelashes like a thousand teensy transmasc chin hairs each one delicate and memorable Don’t all fathers instruct their children to sit while peeing because duh Don’t all fathers hold our children’s hands and hearts and futures with reverence Don’t all fathers fear Don’t all fathers dream Don’t all fathers stumble but choose instead to lift up our children in place of ourselves Don’t all fathers stare in wonder at a day to celebrate us when we were born as little girls who longed to celebrate ourselves but did not know how Don’t all fathers have this? We should.
Your trans friend,
Robin
Beautiful!
Robin—
I want to thank you for sharing this today.
And I want to confess something gently, without shame—
I wasn’t able to read it all.
Not because your words didn’t matter. They do. Deeply.
I had just responded to a deep reflection on loss, in the aftermath of the Air India crash, to another person, and in doing so, remembered a part of my own life that will always be painful to remember. My father. My brother. The moments that don’t let go once you’ve opened that particular drawer.
So I’m letting myself be honest here: I’ll return to your piece when I can meet it fully. When my breath doesn’t catch quite so sharply in my chest. What I already sense is that your voice carries something sacred. Grounded. Real. And I want to honor it by not rushing through.
Thank you for being part of this space. For making room for complexity—for beauty shaped in many forms. I’ll come back when I’m ready.
—Jay