I have seen my father cry three times in my life.

The first time was when I was a freshman in high school. My younger brother was in sixth grade and in danger of having to repeat his first year of middle school; my father tried to work with him, proofreading his essays, making flashcards for science class, reviewing math problems. But whatever efforts my father put into helping my brother succeed were shrugged off, and he progressively became more and more annoyed, until he exploded in a fit of anger and ran upstairs—slamming the door to the bedroom he shared with my other brother. My father was tired of his indifference and went up the stairs after him. He found the bedroom door locked. He banged on the door so hard it fractured down the middle. It still didn’t open. My father walked away from my brother’s room, walked past mine and let out a choked sob. He told me that he felt he had failed as a father. To him, my brother’s failures were his.

Seven years later, my mother and I were out running errands when we received a text from my dad asking us to come home as soon as possible, with no explanation why. Despite having a few more stops to make, Mom and I headed home. We entered the house laughing, until we saw my father sitting on the couch, his face stricken. He began to tell us that his mother, my grandmother, was in the hospital again, and they didn’t think she would be leaving this time. The words were drowned out by his tears. I wasn’t in the room when she passed the next day. I was downstairs getting coffee for my aunts and uncles. When I came back upstairs, she was gone. I collapsed into my uncle’s arms, as someone took the cups from my hands. I collected my breath and I went to find my dad. He needed me more than I needed him. He didn’t cry then, but wiped my tears away, as we sat by her bedside.

The third time, was 366 days after the second. He came home from work at the usual time and started yelling that the house wasn’t clean enough for family dinner. Didn’t we want to make thing easier for our mom? She was already stressed enough. He was still trying to make things easier for her, even now. Trying to appease his frustration, I began cleaning dishes, removing clutter from the counter and gathering ingredients for a dinner I didn’t know how to make. As the eldest child, it has always been my job to mediate between parents and siblings. It seemed strange that family dinner on a Wednesday night (five days before Christmas) was so important to my father, but I obliged. Dinner was normal, but I didn’t do a very good job of cooking the lamb chops; they were dry, and we realized after one bite that something in the green bean casserole had expired. Someone remembered there had been a recall on fried onions a few months back. The meal was a bust. The boys wanted to get back to the XBox and my sister wanted to invite over a friend. But then my dad explained why a family dinner the day after the first anniversary of his mother’s death, five days before Christmas was so important—my father is transgender.

When he first said it, I thought it was a joke. My father makes a lot of jokes that, more often than not, I don’t find funny. I thought this was just one of those occasions. I didn’t make eye contact with him as to not encourage him, but then the joke became a reality.

I am moving out of the house, and getting my own apartment where I can live as myself, twenty-four-seven.

He would be just down the street, but he— I mean she— would not be living in our house anymore. The house that we sat in, the house that we had lived in for twenty years. The house that had a red dot on the ceiling of the living room from when I was seven years old and startled my dad while he- she- was painting the walls, jumping with the paintbrush in her hand.

What do I call you?

Please call me Dad. I can’t handle anything else.

But to the rest of the world, she would be going by a new name. She kept her initials to honor her father, whom he was originally named after. My dad had always been proud to share her father’s name. I realized that growing out her hair and dying it red was not a poor style mistake, but a decision. All of the packages that arrived were not eBay trinkets but new clothes to fit her new identity. The long periods spent locked in his room were not depressive withdrawals, but the only moments in which she could be herself.

As she spoke, many questions in my head were answered, but even more arose. Will she walk me down the aisle on my wedding day? Will she be my dance partner at my reception? Why can’t he, the one who fostered my love of writing and creativity, the one who encouraged me to follow my dreams of being a writer, be the one to celebrate my accomplishments when I graduate college? Why was she making this choice?

This is just a phase, she is confused, I thought to myself. But can fifty-two-year-olds go through phases? She coached the Little League baseball teams. She was a Cub Scout Den leader. She screamed at the TV for every Sunday night football game. She mowed the lawn and cut down trees. None of this made sense to me.

She said she had felt these feelings going back to when he was a child. At only four years old, she felt more like a daughter than a son. When she hit high school and started dating girls, she was “fixed”. But she was confused then and confused now. She didn’t understand why she needs to do this, but she knew she needed to do this. She still loves my mom, she said. That will never change. My mom leaned forward in her chair, hands half covering her face, sending darting glances at each of her adult children, wanting to shield them. No one moved a muscle when our dad told us that her anxieties about her male identity returned almost two years ago. Mom had known for a year. I looked to her once again. She was falling apart. We were motionless, as my father told us that she has already started to transition at work; she had been trying out different voices to sound feminine over the phone.

Our dog, Charlie, circled the table and rested his chin on our laps, hoping to get the leftover lamb chops that had now gone cold. He was oblivious to his family’s sudden change in energy, he only wanted food and love. I absentmindedly rubbed his ears as he tilted his head into my hand. I thought about my dad in a new apartment. Would she ever come visit the house? Would she ever see Charlie again? Dad loves him, and thinking about her never seeing Charlie again broke my heart the most. It made me want to hold them both close to me and never let them go.

My dad managed to tell her story, giving a glimpse of what our life would look like. What she couldn’t handle, she said, is thinking that she’d let us down. She taught her sons how to be men, and now, she has betrayed them. She hoped her daughters would learn how boys were to respect them from her, but how can she do that if she was never a man in the first place? She wants our family to get through this, as she gestures to a sign on the wall, hanging directly across from her that read, “our family is a circle of strength and love”.  As she pointed, she could no longer retain her composure. She knew this is the life she was meant to live. For her, life was now clear. But for the other five people at the table, there was nothing but confusion. Even the things that had seemed certain were blown away. She knew this, and it broke her. We didn’t know what our family would look like at the end of this transition. 

I stood up out of my chair, startling the dog sitting beside me and stood behind my father, wrapping my arms around her broad shoulders.

We love you, Dad. That will never change.

That night, I did a Google search for my father’s new name. A profile came up of her in a red wig and a white dress, similar to one Marilyn Monroe would have worn. There was my father standing in front of my bedroom curtains, posing in front of my full-length mirror that was left behind while I was away at college. I couldn’t help but scroll through the limited photos that were shared for public consumption. I recognized the blue eyes, the gentle crow’s feet around the corners of her eyes—now accentuated with eyeliner—her strong nose and thin lips, and bright white teeth: this is my dad. I couldn’t stop looking at the photos as tears streamed down my face. Recognizable, but so different.

My mom came and talked to me, as I sat alone in my room that night. Going back and forth between college and this house for the past few years distorted my sense of home. I never felt like I was in the right place, I was always missing someone or somewhere no matter where I was. And now, I missed a time where my family was whole, a time to which I could no longer go back. Once, all six of us went on a road trip to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. We borrowed my grandparents’ pop-up trailer for the trip and hitched it to the back of our minivan. At one of the many stops along the way, my dad was driving, forgetting that the trailer was attached to the car, and attempted to back into a spot. Frustration from being packed inside a car with four adolescents for hours on end probably didn’t help matters, but my mom exploded in a fit of rage. Both parents exited the car screaming about backing into a parking spot. My little brother asked me if mom and dad were getting a divorce and I, being the oldest and, hopefully, the voice of reason, told him “of course not”.

There had been fights and arguments before, all of which scared me and, as I grew older, angered me, but I never thought that they were more than what my friends’ parents went through. Fights were a normal part of marriage; my parents were strong and would never get a divorce. Now, at twenty-two years old, I had to learn what it felt like to be the child of separated parents. My mom explained to me that since she had known about my dad for over a year, she carried the weight of the secret on her shoulders. She couldn’t confide in anyone, not even her parents or her own children. For over a year, she carried the burden of protecting and supporting her husband and shielding her children while she was slowly crushed under the weight, alone. I asked if we should start calling Dad “she”. Mom still calls my father him.

Later on, seeing how happy my dad was, even while she was hurt and missing her family, hurt me. We had a good life—were four kids and a wife not good enough for him? Could he not just continue on the way he had been for fifty-two years? What was so bad about the way things were? I realize, in hindsight, how selfish these thoughts were.

My dad texted me asking me to bring over some things she left in the house to her new apartment. It felt like a betrayal to tell my mom that I was heading over there. I didn’t know which parent needed me more. I knocked on the door to my dad’s new place—3B. She opens the door. I hold out the laundry basket full of items that had been left behind and take a step back, as I process seeing her in the flesh for the first time. She is wearing the old yellow sweatshirt that had been washed so many times that the threads around the cuffs and the collar were worn out. There is a picture of me as an infant: my dad wearing that very same sweatshirt and throwing me in the air. But now, my dad wore clip-on earrings and lipstick, and tight fitted leggings that look like the ones I wore. Once I was inside the apartment, I helped organize the guest room closet, a blend of masculine and feminine clothes. Drab and en femme.

While picking up a shirt, my dad began to talk. She said that this is the happiest she has felt since the week after Naval boot camp, when he was in shape and strong. She hasn’t felt this comfortable in her body, since 1992. That despite how perfect his life had been, she couldn’t keep living the way he had. Her traditionalist values held her back. There were two things she wanted to celebrate as a man: her marriage to my mom, which would have reached twenty-five years just ten months later, and walking her eldest daughter down the aisle at her wedding, as her father. But those desires were not enough. My dad started thinking about the song we were going to dance to at my wedding when I was only a few months old. While making the decision to come out, she made a playlist of father-daughter dance songs. She choked up as she said this, and I did too. Not because of the playlist, but because our shared vision of a day that was so far in the future, because of me—my dad waited so long to embrace who she was.