Love for your child is sacred, on every day

We received an email from a couple of readers about my column on Sunday, which I would have ignored if it wasn’t representative of ways of thinking I want to address.

“Strange message for the most sacred Christian day of the Year,” the email says.

The idea that a group can own the rights to free expression on a day that happens to be one of its religious holidays is ridiculous in a nation that includes citizens of multiple religions, ethnicities and cultures. 

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion … “ the First Amendment says, and neither shall anyone else. But the notion persists among the easily offended faithful that they shall not only be able to celebrate their holidays as they choose but tell other people what to do on those days as well.

Also, and more urgently, the email is based on the wrong premise that expressing love for a transgender child is inherently offensive to Christians.

I wasn’t sure what the writers were referring to when I first read the email, so I scanned the column. Most of it concerned downtown revitalization in Glens Falls; then came a bit about Sandy Hill Arts Center and McKernon Gallery in Hudson Falls; then a section on spring poems, followed by a photo of purple crocuses; and, finally, a podcast with my son, Zo, about transgender … oh.

I am aware of the resistance that can arise when the terms “transgender,” “trans,” “nonbinary” and “preferred pronouns” come up in conversation. But since I associate Zo with joy, not conflict, I was surprised to realize the email was about him.

In Dr. Seuss’s  “The Grinch who Stole Christmas,” the Grinch hears the Whos in Whoville singing as he’s about to tip a sleigh full of their presents over a cliff.

“And what happened, then?” the book says. “Well, in Whoville they say – that the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day.”

That is the way I felt in the second week of January 1996 in the Gladney adoption agency in Fort Worth, Texas, when I first held Zo in my arms.

The joy of holding my children has led to the more sober pleasures of interacting with them as adults. But the changes Zo has gone through on his way to adulthood were foretold in the way he was from the earliest age.

I have gone through a learning process as Zo has shifted to identifying himself as a man, understanding gender in a different, less rigid way. That understanding is still evolving.

But one thing I do comprehend and appreciate is the healing and hopefulness that comes from embracing those I love in all their variety. In the Easter season, as winter transforms into spring, that is the message I celebrate.

Zo sits on our couch recently, browsing on his laptop.