The Smile Is Missing

mother So much is still with me – some clothes, a handbag, the odd earring. Looking back, something was missing – a smile was missing. Neither she nor I were happy enough with ourselves. Being looked at is a serious business. The smile – where is it? When was it? Why wasn’t it then? And there is the example, the model behaviour, the role that is a pose. The cliché says that mothers make trans (and gay, and desire). Does every family have a Mother? What about a Father? A parent bears the burden of the child, and my mother bore me – but was she my begetter? Did she make me? She still contained me; she ruled the house, the family, - and owed me protection, but she never paid that due; I was neglected. To free myself from that failed/imperfect attachment I traded the adviser, the teacher, the consoler, for the dominatrix, for Mother Mary, for the bodhisattva Kuan Yin – I claimed those roles, played them to the hilt.