Clumsy Love

In the summer of 2011, at a gathering in the north woods of Wisconsin, my four-year-old son, and only child, "e;Simon"e; conspicuously tried dressing as a girl, donning a pair of oversized fairy wings and stunning his extended family into silence. Four years later, he informed my wife and me that he was a girl and would be wearing a dress to her ninth birthday party. By thirteen, she'd legally changed her name from Simon to Simone, and the three of us began making regular trips from our home in West Central Wisconsin to Madison to see an endocrinologist at the University of Wisconsin's Pediatric and Adolescent Transgender Health (PATH) Clinic. As Simone transitions and enters into adolescence, I find myself asking thornier questions: How do I support her journey without over-worrying about her safety? What do we do with family photos depicting a version of our child who no longer exists? And how might I mourn the loss of my son while wholeheartedly embracing my new daughter? Clumsy Love tells the story of my evolving, imperfect, but always genuine attempts to raise my transgender child. As my trans-daughter grows on her journey to be who she's always known she is, I, too, grow on my journey as a parent, learning daily what it means to love a child I didn't expect to have.