Waiting For Flight
When she was born, the midwife said, "Reach down and grab your baby." I did as instructed. This was my fourth birth. I knew what to expect as I reached down to assist the clammy, wet clump of flesh making its entrance. I lifted the fragile being to my chest.
"It's a girl," whispered the midwife. My mind went sideways. A girl? No, it's not possible. I was having a boy. I had only picked a boy name: Calvin. I was sure this baby was a boy until I looked closer and leaned back in wonder. " Wow, my boy has a vagina." These thoughts flutter through along with a thousand other thoughts that flock and flee a new mother's mind.
Thirteen years later, my daughter declared what I had somehow known. She hangs a flag on her bedroom door to proclaim her truth. It's the transgender flag, and on it is written, he, him, his.
This is not in the baby books, and I am trying to figure out how to proceed. So I sit at the edge of his bed in a room filled with polka-dots and frogs, as he explains. I listen. I hold the space for the news, and I struggle.
A groove has been created in my mind about a little girl named Rosemary, who is scrappy and artsy and loves frogs and baking and telling jokes, and she is both no longer here and yet not really gone. I am watching a caterpillar transform into a butterfly, and I am sad to see the caterpillar go. I can't express how dearly I have loved this little caterpillar. I want to say, "Wait. Go slowly." And yet, I know you can't stop the sun from rising. Not when he is staring at me with such hopeful eyes, brimming with one simple question. "Do you see me, Mom? Do you see me now?"
Of course I do.
Transitioning is a part of life. Night moves into day, Winter to Spring, and we all go along. Something rises at the cost of something fading, and so it can feel like death. But it's not. It's transition.
Caterpillars offer a roadmap. The caterpillar kills off all she once knew when preparing for the great transition. First, she stops feeding herself, starving off the old story. Then she climbs to a twig, hangs herself upside down, and begins weaving a silk shell, a sanctuary to hold the time of transformation. Finally, she begins to digest herself by releasing enzymes that take all her parts down to goo—turning everything into a caterpillar soup except for the imaginal disc.
What is this imaginal disc? From my poetic mind, I imagine this little disc whispering "imaginings" to the caterpillar soup. "Imagine, imagine, imagine…Do not go back to your old ways. The bridge is burnt. Do not conform to old definitions. They are broken. Step to the cusp of the unknown. Move toward flight. Imagine, imagine, imagine flight."
I look at myself and all the nothingness I cling to, and slowly, cautiously, I begin to let go.
But first, I hang out in the end, the blank space. There is nothing else to do. I am hooked and hanging upside down at the foot of my child's bed. My world has turned to soup. He is weaving a new story made from new silk. I watch and wait as he weaves.
And so we wait together, on the cusp of this great mystery, this place that I did not know was—this uncharted territory.
We sit and wait for flight.
PROMPT: On day 18, write about the call to the adventure when you stood on the cliff, let go of who you thought you were, and remembered that you actually were a butterfly.
