The Paths We Take

 

When my grandmother died back in February, my first thought was relief. She had been ill for some time and her mind had started slipping before that. Once a lively, vivacious person, she could barely recognize her great grandchildren and spent most of her days in contented silence. I saw her two weeks before she died to say goodbye; she actually looked really good and I thought that I might see her again. But things turned quickly. Thankfully, I got the chance to tell her I love her on the phone one last time. The next day, she passed.

My second thought was an incredible sadness. It has not really dissipated and is felt more acutely this time of year. And really all year as I've stared my existence in the mirror and at last, dared myself to do better for me. I miss her more than I thought I would, my grief for her inseparable with my transition.

My grandmother was the person for whom the term “social butterfly” exists. She was a faithful church attendee, though I think that was more for company than religion. She joined social clubs for the ladies. She loved nothing more than visiting me in New York. She loved to be out with people, ideally a glass of wine on hand. 

The more I learned about her life, the more it made sense. She grew up in 1950s Baltimore, right in the thick of the Eastern Avenue milieu portrayed in Hairspray. It was, if not a queer culture, certainly queer-adjacent as the movie and musical both showed. Hairspray's director, the infamous John Waters, once accurately said:  “I would never want to live anywhere but Baltimore. You can look far and wide, but you'll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style. It's as if every eccentric in the South decided to move north, ran out of gas in Baltimore, and decided to stay.” Though my grandmother's folks hailed from Ohio and West Virginia respectively, there's truth to this. 

From what I understand, she was quite popular. She would talk about her girlfriends from growing up and she always knew someone at a function, no matter how far from home. My favorite encounter from her funeral was the elementary school classmate, who even in her 80s braved the other side of Baltimore's notorious beltway along with her husband just to say goodbye. I had never met these people before but they raved about my grandmother's friendliness and kindness. 

At this point, I'm reluctant to put too much of my family's business out there. We're not private people; if you're familiar with Baltimore's Synodical life from the past 40 years, you'll know us. But I still want to be respectful of loved ones who are reading this. 

So let's just say adulthood didn't go the way my grandmother expected. And for many reasons, none of them tragic but many of them difficult, she never took to domesticity. She was not a negligent parent but maternal responsibilities were not the sole signifier in her life. She liked good drink and a good time well until she couldn't anymore. She took pride in her kids and great pride in her grandkids but she also embraced all aspects of her life, mining every ounce of agency for all it was worth.

And it's the part that makes me sad because I believe my grandmother, like a lot of women, deserved a better life. She should have had paths that many women have today. Maybe it still would have turned out the same but those should have been her choices to make.

My grandmother was perhaps the most feminine person I had in my family (save me, of course!). I'm sure she punctured her own hole in the o-zone layer from all the hairspray she used. Salon appointments were essential. Makeup was a necessity. She was not a flashy dresser but she liked to look nice and took pride in her appearance.

We were always close and while by appearances many believed I was closer to my grandfather, I still felt this special bond with her. She didn't have the fierce temper that many men in my family possess, which allowed me to fell vulnerable to her in a way I didn't with others. She was caustic and cutting at times but it was always done in service to encouraging improvement. 

She also really loved my wife. The first time my wife visited me in Baltimore, I had some sort of church obligation so my grandmother took her to see, what else?, the recently remade Hairspray. It was a point of pride for her to do that and they had a nice time, as my poor then-girlfriend patiently listened to her regaling her with stories of her youth. She always cared for the women in mine and my brother's lives and was happy for us.

But that comes with its own degree of pain. Because my grandmother never got to know me. 

My grandmother was always proud of her self-proclaimed liberalism, even though it manifested in cringe-worthy behavior. She would never be mistaken for an anti-racist activist but she did gleefully call out the promulgators of Baltimore's white working class racism which she (and I) had grown up with. She wanted freedom and autonomy for women. She was loudly pro-gay even in an era where that was considered gauche. 

So I like to think she would have loved me for who I am. And I like to think as two women, we would have shared our own special bond. For I had always felt like I had seen my grandmother's interiority and understood her and what she wanted for her life. I wish there was a way where she had gotten more out of it.

I don't allow myself to fantasize much about what would have been. What would have been was not and I have a lot of work to do. I don't hold fictional images of my grandmother being welcoming or accepting, showing me how to do makeup, taking me out to shop. That wasn't what life had in store for either of us. 

(That doesn't mean I'm not weeping like a baby every time I look at the stock image I put up.)

What I do like to believe is that I'm living a life for her in a way she could not. I'm fortunate not to have such a difficult domestic circumstance as she did but I also don't want my life defined by it. I yearn to be free and fortunately, my wife and I support each other with our similar goals. At 40, I'm finally taking charge of my personhood in a way she did not get the chance. And I want to make the most of it for her. 

It's hard this year without her at Christmas, even if she hadn't been herself in some time. She was a living reminder of the truth I knew about myself that I couldn't express. I don't think it's a coincidence that I decided to transition not long after she died; she had done what she could with her life and now it was my turn. 

But as I prepare to go home for the week, I wish I could hug her while wearing red nail polish and leaving a lipstick smudge on her cheek for kissing her and indulging her making a comment on my sweater and hear her say “Allie” in her atrocious Bawlmer accent. I would sacrifice years of my life just to have her in front of me now and hear her call me by my name. 

At her viewing, my brother collected photos of her to display. Every free moment I had that night, I’d wander over to the section that showed when she was young. When she still had her own dreams for her life. I wish I had known her back then.

And that’s how I choose to remember her: as a young woman full of confidence and love. It’s how I feel like she would want to be remembered. She left behind a lot of feminine energy. For her, I step into it.