It’s true that my child used to be a little boy and is now a little girl. But this isn’t her story. I can’t tell her story; I can only tell my own story and those of the people I make up. I didn’t make my kid up. She’s a real person, so she’s the only one who can tell her story. This story is fiction, pretend. It’s not about my kid. It’s not about her experiences. It’s not even about my experiences. Writing a novel is like making soup. The base is a broth we make up wholesale—for instance, I have one child, not five, and am not only not a doctor but, in fact, am made woozy by paper cuts. Then, to that entirely made-up broth, we add a sprinkling of research, some chunks of childhood memories, a handful of sautéed morsels overheard at the playground, a few diced bits we weren’t planning on but turned out to need for depth of flavor, and some finely chopped pieces of our own lives. Simmer until all the disparate parts mellow and blend but still enhance and augment one another. This is how you cook a novel. Some made up, some real life, all true.
Sometimes people ask that same question like this: “What inspired this book?” by which they mean, “Is this really your own life with the names changed, or what on earth gave you this idea?” which in this case might be an easier question to answer.
The novelist in me was inspired in the first place by the debate about treating trans kids with puberty blockers, by the way loving, open-minded, well-intentioned people could reasonably come down on what seem to be opposing sides of this issue. Hormone suppressors are miracles for kids who simply cannot live in the body into which they were born. I would not suggest otherwise. Trans and gender nonconforming kids and adults suffer a suicide-attempt rate of more than 40 percent. Drugs which avert that qualify as miraculous indeed. But that doesn’t make them the only miracle on offer. Wider ranges of normal make the world a better place for everyone. To me, both those positions seem self-evidently true. Other people frame them as opposites. That’s the kind of stuff that makes you want to write a book.
The novelist in me was inspired by the metaphor too, how no matter the issue, parenting always involves this balance between what you know, what you guess, what you fear, and what you imagine. You’re never certain, even (maybe especially) about the big deals, the huge, important ones with all the ramifications and repercussions. But alas, no one can make these decisions, or deal with their consequences, but you. High stakes plus unknowability equals great writing fodder.
The novelist in me is inspired by how much raising children is like writing books: You don’t know where they’re going until they get there. You may think you do, but you’re probably wrong. Corralling and forcing them against their will to go where you first imagined they would isn’t going to work for anyone involved. Never mind you’re the one writing and raising them, they are headed in their own direction, independent of you. And scary though that is, it’s also how it should be.
So at the beginning of this project, the novelist in me felt pretty great. But the mama in me was panicked. The mama in me was watching her little boy transform into her little girl before her very eyes. In some ways, that wasn’t any weirder or scarier or more unbelievable than watching kids grow up ever is. In other ways, it was a little weirder and scarier and unbelievable-er. I’d written many, many words before I figured out exactly what it was that was so much scarier about this transformation than any of her other ones. The answer had nothing to do with her. It had to do with everybody else.
I am so proud of my kid, but I am terrified about how others will respond to her—today and next year and down the very windy road ahead. I am every day amazed by how bright and wise and strong and sure she is but petrified by the fear and ignorance she’s likely to encounter along her way. I fret about her every moment she’s out of my sight (and many of the ones when she’s in it), so in some ways, all this does is make a little longer an already very long list of worries. One of the differences between your novel and your life, at least as regards parenting, is you want the former to be perilous, unpredictable, full of near misses and heartbreak and disasters narrowly averted. The latter? The latter you want to be as plot-free as possible.
So here’s what’s true: This book is fiction. My child is neither Poppy nor Claude. I am not Rosie. Do we share some things in common with them? Yes. But this book is an act of imagination, an exercise in wish fulfillment, because that is the other thing novelists do. We imagine the world we hope for and endeavor, with the greatest power we have, to bring that world into being. I wish for my child, for all our children, a world where they can be who they are and become their most loved, blessed, appreciated selves. I’ve rewritten that sentence a dozen times, and it never gets less cheesy, I suppose because that’s the answer to the question. That’s what’s true. For my child, for all our children, I want more options, more paths through the woods, wider ranges of normal, and unconditional love. Who doesn’t want that?
I know this book will be controversial, but honestly? I keep forgetting why.