Solar Eclipse

In the waiting room at my trans son's top surgery

I’m nursing cold coffee in the waiting room and trying to stay busy. The day of Mac’s top surgery is here. The surgery center, in an affluent part of New Jersey is posh. Expensive interior design, aesthetic lighting. The medical group our surgeon is part of does facelifts, tummy tucks. I am overwhelmed by a sense of elective surgery. But Mac’s procedure is not elective. Gender dysphoria is its own condition, one that can lead to suicidal ideation if not addressed. So.

But it is elective in the sense of timing. Mac is 17. We could have made him wait. Until he’s older. Although in less than one year he could decide for himself anyway. And he has already been anxiously waiting. So.

It is a struggle to quiet my doubts. Is this really the right thing to do? What if he feels differently ten years from now? What if this is irresponsible? What if something goes wrong?

I pick up my phone and see if there’s anyone else I can text to distract me. I’ve already exhausted the threads with my husband, Mac’s girlfriend, my mom, my aunt, and even a fellow chicken owner who just lost most of his flock to some aggressive neighborhood dogs. There is no food here - a possibility I had not considered - so I rummage through my bag and find a couple stocking stuffers of caramel popcorn from yesterday’s trip to Target. I eat through all of it, sip some more coffee.

After Mac began his gender transition I thought a lot about what this means, transition. I had been teaching Victor Turner’s essay “Betwixt and Between” for many years. The essay is about rites of passage – from boy to man, or from single to married. Turner focuses on the middle stage, what he calls the “liminal” stage. This is the part where the initiate is no longer part of the old state (ie – boy) but not yet part of the new one (ie – man). He is neither, but also both.

The liminal phase, in the various rituals Turner studied can be a place of fear and deprivation. Initiates are separated from their families and community, stripped of belongings, perhaps denied food or even clothing. But it is also a place of wonder and possibility: magical visions, secret knowledge, and spiritual insights. It is the place where communication with the divine is possible. Sometimes it is only here, the space between formal “states,” where the divine reveals itself.

I have thought about what it might be like for Mac, living between the states of “female” and “male.” This is, of course, where he is: in transition, “betwixt and between.” What does he see? What does he hear? What does he know?

But you don’t have to be transgender to experience something like this. A few years ago we had the solar eclipse. We knew, scientifically, what it was. We knew when exactly it would happen. And yet, something occurred that was completely unexpected, impossible to measure. During the Weather Channel’s news coverage, reporter Stephanie Abrams was camped out in a field in Madras, Oregon, a particularly optimal place to view the event. People had gathered from far and wide.

Abrams described the scene and narrated the gradual shutter of the moon’s dark form slide across the sun. When, finally, the sun was in “totality” Abrams announced with excitement that the protective glasses could be removed. You could now look straight at the sun with unshaded eyes.

We watch Abrams gaze up to the sky and she is quiet for a moment. She then continues, stammering a bit, “Wow…it’s emotional…I can’t explain why, but it is.”

Her voice sounds like it’s underwater as she explains, “It got really dark down here…I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m so…Jim, I’m surprised by my reaction…I don’t know why I’m so overwhelmed by it. It’s very special.” A polished professional, Abrams could not gain her composure. She wasn’t the only one. Reporters everywhere experienced similar reactions.

What was it that overcame her? She didn’t know. She couldn’t say. But something was happening. In the middle of day, it was night. Both, at once.

There are other experiences that are not so dramatic:

The water’s edge: not land; not sea.

Midnight on New Year’s Eve: no longer the old year, but not yet the new one.

Sitting on a plane: suspended between departure and arrival.

Places and times of reflection, insight, infinite possibility. Before the forms, the structures, the states of social life slot you back in.

Back in the waiting room, the surgeon is here, telling me all went well. I am taken to see Mac, who is awake and sitting up.

My relief is a vast blue sky.

He drinks apple juice through a straw at the side of his mouth and texts “Hey party people!” to the family thread, still feeling the meds. He snuggles the fuzzy stuffed Axolotl from his girlfriend. He is at once my silly toddler and my old soul son.

I once asked him how he saw where he fits in the panorama of gender. I was gentle with this because I had learned that to be trans-affirming means accepting fully and completely the identity of “girl” or “boy,” without qualification.

He mulled the question in the wise way he has of thinking about things, and responded, “I’m sort of more than a boy.”

I remained quiet, giving him space.

“I lived for a bunch of years as a girl, so I know what that was like. Now I’m living as a boy, as myself. Other boys – cis boys – don’t have that experience. I have both.”

What a gift, I immediately think. I try to imagine it, having both perspectives, but my mind bumps up against my limitation of being female, traditionally female, all my life.

There have been so many ways that knowing Mac, watching him grow, hearing his thoughts has opened the world up to me. New insights, new visions. Spending time in the in-between.

I realize that now I look for these magical times, these special places.

Because of Mac, I see the eclipse.

Photo courtesy of Chris Butler/Science Photo Library Art