Letter to Charlie

I wrote this letter to Charlie a couple of months before her death on December 1, 2021. I never had a chance to show it to her.

I see you. Like the Na’vi in Avatar. I see you. My sweet, beautiful, blue-eyed girl. The daughter I always wished for but never believed I would have.

I remember the day I learned you were growing inside me. I had been out for lunch with your Granny at the German grocery store, Denninger’s. Sitting in their cafeteria-style chairs, by the window with a view of the parking lot, I was feeling slightly ill, “like I’m just a little bit pregnant but not,” I told your Granny. I vomited every day through your brother’s gestation so this was definitely not pregnancy in my experience. But Granny looked at me, the spot on my face, shining like a red flag announcing your future appearance, and said, “Are you sure you’re not pregnant?” “I couldn’t possibly be pregnant, Mummy, you know that. We haven’t even started IVF yet” I assured her confidently. “Well let’s just buy a pregnancy kit on the way home, just in case,” she said in her maternal way. I went along with her just to keep her happy -- and quiet.

Later at home, I took the test, looked at the results, and began to sob. “Oh my god, I’m pregnant,” I cried. This was not planned. I hadn’t even been taking vitamins and folic acid! I had just had my eyes lasered, where I had signed a document assuring the clinic that there was absolutely no chance I could be pregnant. “What if I have completely screwed up my child?” I asked no one in particular. I was petrified that I could have bungled up my most important job in the world - to ensure your safe voyage into this world.

One very restless sleep later, I was at the Fertility Clinic. Upon sighting my doctor, I blurted out in a panicked voice,”I think I might be pregnant!” This, in hindsight, was about the worst thing I could do in the midst of a fertility clinic waiting room, filled with women whose fear and pain had been mine only three years before, when the dream of having a child might never come to be. I was just so petrified that my courtesy and subtlety had walked right out the door as I walked in. The doctor quickly shooed me into an examination room, out of earshot of the other patients, and then swiftly along to the ultrasound room. Sure enough, just as I told Granny, I wasn’t just a little bit pregnant. I was 12-weeks pregnant!

Seven weeks later, I was back in an ultrasound room again, this time to learn your sex. Not that I even needed an ultrasound to tell me. I knew you were a girl. This pregnancy was the antithesis of my first pregnancy. Calm, easy, I mean how many people can be 12 weeks pregnant and not even know it? Certainly not I. Obviously, since James, the product of a pregnancy from hell, was a boy, you were obviously a girl. I was so completely positive that you were a girl that when they told me you are a boy, I was devastated. Stupid, I know. As your future godfather assured me, whether you were a girl or boy is not important. You are a person and your body parts won’t define you. How wonderfully prescient he was.

At 38 weeks, you quietly appeared. I wasn’t so quiet. I remember screaming at Daddy, after he soothingly told me that you were on your way, “No shit, Sherlock! You think I don’t know that?” But you didn’t utter a sound. You were so quiet that the collection of Neonatal Intensive Care medical professionals who were standing ready to take you if there was any need and quickly took you to ensure that all was well. This was neither standard procedure, nor really necessary but you were Dr. Watts’s grandchild and that wasn’t a risk anyone was willing to take. Of course, you were perfect. So perfect, in fact, that you effortlessly latched on to my breast as though you had done so a thousand times before. You didn’t even cry for the first week of your life. My sweet, beautiful, blue-eyed boy.

For 15 years, four months, and 27 days, you brought me sunshine and joy, peppered with the odd bit of fear and frustration, as any child will do. I loved you as the calm, funny, intelligent and theatrical boy of the family. That was, as you well know, until December 30th 2020. A day that will live in my mind’s eye forever. There we were, on my bed, staring up at the ceiling together, as we often do when you have something on your mind. “Mum,” you paused and then said, “I’m Trans.”

Today, 15 years, seven months, and 14 days into your life, I look at you and I know that I was right in those early weeks of pregnancy. You are my girl and you always were. No ultrasound could have ever told me that. The ultrasound told me what your body would look like, give or take. But it didn’t tell me who you are. You did that. My girl. My sweet, beautiful, blue-eyed girl.

Your path through this life may not be the easiest. This we both know. But you are brilliant, and kind, and funny. You are like your grandfather in so many ways, not just in the soft blue eyes you share, but in your ability to slice through the emotion of an argument, to reveal the substantive heart of the issue. So many times, you have shown me that there is a different, more just, way of seeing the world. You are, like my beloved Daddy, my reason, my wisdom when emotion has clouded my judgment.

And, always, my sweet, beautiful, blue-eyed girl.

Love you forever Charlie.