Float in Stuff

We drove to the therapy appointment together in silence, and that was perhaps the most unnerving part of the whole evening. Mercer can be a quiet kid, but particularly when we are alone together we usually talk quite a bit.

There were cordial greetings and then we all sat down in her office. It was a very warm and welcoming office. She had an assortment of seating options and encouraged Mercer and I into large comfy chairs side by side. She tells us that she’s there mostly to be support for Mercer.

Mercer starts with, “I’ve been really struggling with trying to figure out my gender identity and orientation.”

This was said as if it was a great reveal of a secret, but I thought this was a well established fact at this point. I’ve been neither supportive nor unsupportive of his journey, mostly because I didn’t see much I could do but let him continue to discover himself with the help of his therapist.

They both seemed to be waiting for my response, and I didn’t want to seem as nonplussed as I really had been feeling, so I said something along the lines of understanding that he was dealing with this struggle and being there for him.

Mercer grimaced noticeably when I used the male pronouns and then said, “Are you prepared for the idea that I may identify as a gender other than male?”

This notion that there are all these other genders is a little weird to me. It sounded to me that Mercer was leading towards one of these nebulous gender identities that seem to me like the equivalent of “I am whatever I think I am.” I saw a bumper sticker one day that summed it up really well in my mind. It said, “Don’t believe everything you think.”

But I said, “There will be a learning curve for me with this stuff, but you know I love you and will accept you regardless of gender or anything else.”

I had a moment of feeling like the therapist was judging my responses and it felt like I was trying to pass a test. I immediately resented this and wished Mercer and I could have talked about this at home without her there.

While all these thoughts were going through my head, Mercer said, “I want to start identifying as female 24/7 in my life, although I’m not completely certain that female is the identity I’ll stick with.”

This almost caught me by surprise, but I feel like I’m beyond being surprised with these things anymore. I said, “Will I still call you Mercer?” which may have been a silly first reaction to the news.

Mercer responded, “Yes, but you’ll also call me she and her. Are you OK with that?”

I nodded. Pretty sure that I am OK with that. I started thinking about the complete mindset change of saying I have three daughters.

We didn’t talk about it at all on the ride home. Instead we discussed what we wanted for dinner. Mercer wanted a root beer float, so we went to a diner.