I consider myself a lucky woman: I got to marry the same amazing person twice?the first time they wore a tux, and the second time, they wore a wedding gown.
For nearly eighteen years of marriage, I knew my spouse as a man. When we got married first time around, we were new parents to an infant son. We couldn?t afford a photographer or a honeymoon. We both rented our wedding apparel, and we bought our rings second-hand at a pawn shop.
But while funds were scarce, love was abundant. That love has carried us through not only one, but two gender transitions in our family. My spouse coming out as a woman was not the first shift inside the walls of our sleepy suburban home. All of it began with a cry for help from a very brave child.
If you had asked me to describe my family a few years ago, I would have told you we were a mother, father and three sons. The vanilla latte of families. And I like vanilla lattes, thank you very much. They?re simple and predictable. We might have looked the part of a perfect family, but there were issues beneath the surface. A veil of unhappiness hung over our household. Both my spouse and our middle child were sullen, withdrawn and often angry. They seemed to want to hide from the world rather than be engaged in it. We rarely got together with others or went out as a family of five. Social activities were too stressful for all of us with two unwilling participants. I longed for a family that had fun together. For many years, we were not that family...