The Mother of the ?

Weddings are such joyous occasions, aren’t they? Just imagine – two families uniting with the sole aim of celebrating the joining of two happy souls who are embarking on their life together. The clothes, the shoes (until discarded because who finds formal shoes comfortable by the end of a day full of ceremony and mingling and dancing?), the décor, the food, the speeches. Full of warm fuzzy anecdotes of shared memories of the spouses and their families, silly stories of children growing up, for their parents to proclaim how proud they are now and what beautiful people they have become.

I won’t be making a speech at my daughter’s wedding. I can’t tell our families how I loved shopping for dinosaur clothes in the boys’ sections in stores because it felt like there was a connection between me and my tomboy daughter because, apparently, she’s always been a boy. I can’t tell them how we chose her name that so well matched her looks and personality right from the start as she has changed her name and I’d be deadnaming her. I can’t say how proud and pleased I am for my daughter for completing both her college degree and training for to a career in which she is rapidly rising through the ranks because I shouldn’t publicly call her my daughter, and absolutely nobody else in our families understands how much that hurts. I can’t welcome my new daughter-in-law into our family as I really want to (she really is a lovely person), because giving a speech will out me as a believer in biological reality, as I can’t bring myself to lie and call my daughter “son”.

And the next problem is that, on this happy occasion, how do I answer people who ask me how proud I am of my son?