Holiday Short Stories
Jayne Amanda Maynes
Copyright © 2014 Jayne A Maynes
All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-3101-6491-0
Index
A Fathers Dream!
Christmas Snow!
The Christmas Goose!
The Christmas Wish!
The New Year Fool?
A Fathers Dream!
It's my experience that every man hopes to one day have a son to carry on his name once he's gone. I'm no different, but to me the health of my children comes first, and that is their mental health as well as their physical health. Here I want to talk about my youngest since she wasn't what she appeared to be on the outside.
Angela wasn't born Angela, but that is, who she is now, as well who she has always been. I was so proud the day she was born thinking I had the son who would one day carry on the name keeping my line alive to the next generation and maybe beyond. She was wrapped in a little blue blanket the day she was born. We fixed her room up to suit our idea of what a boy was since that was what we thought she was. For three years we believed her to be the boy she seemed. Then one day she showed who she was inside. She was playing dress up with her sisters, and they dressed her in their clothes. At first I was furious they would do something like that, but decided I would let it slide since they were all still so young.
I talked to the older girls about dressing Angela in their clothes, and they said they only did it because she started crying when she couldn't be a girl and dress up like they did. I started watching as they played more closely, in hopes of understanding what they did, and how they did it. A few days later they were playing dress up again and this time I heard the girls tell Angela she was a boy and boys didn't dress in girls clothes. I had never heard Angela talk the way she did that day before, and was sure I had simply been hearing things until she started crying saying she was a girl too, and just wanted to dress up so she could be pretty.
Allison the oldest looked over at me, and I nodded that if letting Angela dress like a girl would stop her crying let her dress like a girl. As they started Angela said she wanted to dress like a girl completely, she wanted to wear panties too, so she could be a girl not just look like one. I chuckled hearing that logic coming from a three year old. She wanted to be a girl, and that meant not just wearing girl clothes that everyone could see, but wearing girl clothes that went underneath as well, just in case she happened to show a little too much. Brittany said she could have a pair of her old panties that didn't really fit anymore, but there was no way she was wearing her new panties. Angela smiled and said she didn't care as long as they were real girl panties not the silly boy panties mom and I made her wear.
I started looking into what was going on and found a therapist that said it was normal for a boy that age who had only sisters to want to fit in. When I brought up that she wanted to fit in by being a girl even insisting on wearing girl underwear, the therapist said I needed to put a stop to it and fast, by making sure she learned she was a boy, and boys didn't do those kinds of things. He suggested I not allow her to play with anything but boy toys until she learned the difference. I thought about what he told me, and thought of how that might affect Angela mentally. I wasn't going to stop my children from expressing themselves in a manner they felt was right just because it didn't fit a mold I set. My children were and still are free to be who they see themselves to be, as long as they abide by the laws that we have about not stealing, cheating, hurting others or killing. I wanted them to feel they could come to me for anything, and if that meant Angela became Angela so be it, we weren't old enough yet we couldn't try again if it turned out Angela was a girl mentally.
I talked with my wife about what the therapist said and let her know I didn't agree with them about forcing our child to fit into a mold that may, or may not fit them. Who were we to say Angela wasn't a girl in spirit, even though the physical evidence said otherwise. Catherine wanted to try what the therapist said until I gave her my concerns about what might happen with Angela losing her trust in us to look out for what is best for her, rather then what is convenient for us. She started watching how the kids interacted more closely as well noticing it was Angela who insisted she was a girl not the other girls trying to get her to act like a girl. We both noticed Angela did things that were different then the other girls, but they each did things their own way and that was something we encouraged strongly in all of them.
I started looking for another therapist to talk to about what was happening with Angela. She was willing to accept the name we had given her at birth, but refused to accept she was male in any way that mattered. She always insisted she have her top covered and refused to wear any of the underwear she had before Brittany was willing to let her have all her panties that no longer fit. A few weeks after they started playing dress up she started refusing to wear anything she felt was boy clothes, because she was a girl just like Allison and Brittany were, and if they didn't have to wear boy clothes she didn't see why she did.
One day while I was out on a service call I met a woman I was sure was at one time considered to have been a man. I struck up a conversation asking questions I thought might help me in determining better what I suspected. She said if I wanted to know for sure I needed to just ask. She told me that transitioning wasn't something she had taken lightly because there were so many out there who said she was anything but a woman even now, after she had been through surgery to correct the deformity she had been born with.
The deformity she had been born with! I never looked at it that way, I thought of Angela and what she was going through and knew she felt it really was a deformity, just as I was sure Angela would later in her life unless...no think positively here Kevin Angela is Angela, whether, or not anyone else wants to believe it, you've seen for yourself she can't be anything but who she is. I asked if this lady knew of a therapist I could talk to who could help my little Angela and she gave me the name of the therapist she had seen for several years, saying they really knew their stuff and if I wasn't sure I was trans they would be able to help me figure it out before I did something crazy. I thanked her and assured her I wasn't trans, but thought one of my kids might be, she smiled. She told me she wished more people cared about the welfare of their children, and their mental health, maybe if more people cared the way I seemed to the problems those like her faced would become smaller.
Angela insisted she was what no one wanted to believe was possible. I talked to our pastor about it and got the same kind of thing I had gotten from the first therapist I talked to about it. As long as I nipped it now there was a good chance my little Kevin would learn trying to be something he couldn't possibly be was wrong, after all God doesn't make mistakes, does he?
I thought of all the babies born every year with some kind of physical birth defect and had to ask if they weren't mistakes. If we are all created perfect, why did we spend so much time and energy trying to fix what God wanted in the first place? I wanted answers and all I was getting were more questions. No I don't believe God makes mistakes, but if that's true, then someone explain all the birth defects to me. Is what my little Angela had any less a birth defect? If so why?
I went to see the therapist I had been told was so good, about what my little girl, that didn't seem to be a girl, was going through. I needed answers and I was quickly running out of places to find them. It hadn't taken me long to discover there was tons of stuff on the internet, but trying to figure out what was good and what wasn't was a nightmare I was sure could end up becoming a lifetime search. At the second therapist I explained what I wanted, hoping they could help me in finding something of
value that didn't involve forcing my child into a mold that didn't fit who they were. They asked several questions about how Angela behaved with the other girls compared to how she behaved when she was alone or with her mom or me. I tried to think of a single time when I had seen her do something that could have been deemed as being male only, and couldn't come up with a single instance, while at the same time could rattle off several things she did that were considered to be female by nature.
I wanted a little boy so bad, and the hopes of having one were dwindling rapidly as Catherine's doctor informed her just a few days prior she wouldn't be able to even bring another child to term. We mourned the day we got the news. She could get