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| "Everyone thinks we're sisters, but actually, we're mother and son." (from New Yorker) |
(I have told this story here on past Mother's Days, so you may have read it before and I apologize for the rerun. But just like some of the reruns on television, some are worth repeating.)
Mom was the most influential person in my life and influenced my penchant for crossdressing in a number of ways.
She was beautiful and did not need makeup. Lipstick, powder, and rouge were all she ever used. I know because I enjoyed watching her put on her minimal makeup.
She always dressed like a fashionable lady and that was difficult to accomplish because money was tight when I was a kid. As a result, Mom sewed her own clothes, as well as clothes for my sister.
I guess I was jealous of my sister and wished that Mom would sew something for me, but there were few sewing patterns for boys' clothing. However, I would have been perfectly happy if she sewed a pretty dress for me like she did for my sister.
My Dad was a great guy, but he was not around much when I was growing up. He worked all the overtime he could get to make ends meet. For a few years, he also had a second job.
I can remember way back to my earliest memories when I actually thought that my father was a visitor because his appearances at home during my waking hours were so rare. So, during my formative years, Dad was at work, while my Mom was at home raising my sister and me.
Since I was raised in an environment where the father figure was absent most of the time, it is no wonder that I tended to follow in the footsteps of the only parental figure available to me, my Mom. As a result, I admired her and wanted to do the things she did. I did not know it at the time, but she was my role model.
I was a creative kid and Mom encouraged my creative side. I loved sports, especially baseball, but I was not very good at it (I could hit the ball a mile, but I threw "like a girl"). So early on, I knew what my strengths were.
I spent a lot of time writing and drawing and my mother supported and encouraged me. Eventually, I became a successful professional writer with a lot of thanks going to Mom.
I looked like my Mom's side of the family and inherited many of her features like her long legs and her facial features. When I do my makeup just so, I look a lot like her; people would mistake us for mother and daughter, i.e., if she were alive and I dressed en femme in her presence.
Besides influencing my creative side, she also influenced my penchant for being feminine.
Mom often commented that because I had such nice legs, I should have been a girl. If she had made that comment once, I probably would have forgotten about it, but it seemed to me that she made that comment whenever she saw my legs bare. Don't you think that may have influenced me?
She also made comments about the way I walked. She said I "tippy-toed," i.e., I walked on my toes. I assumed from her comments that tippy-toeing was not the correct way for a male to walk, but I did not know how to walk any other way. She never showed me how I was supposed to walk, so I just kept on tippy-toeing.
I don't tippy-toe any longer. As I grew older, I must have figured out how to walk like a male. However, all my early years tippy-toeing may have facilitated my walking in high heels because ever since I slipped on my first pair of pumps, I never had a problem walking in heels.
I did not think that Mom knew about my crossdressing, because she never broached the subject despite the fact that I often got into her stuff and even ruined some items that I found out the hard way, were too small for me. I was very much in the closet then and I was just as happy that she did not know. But, she knew.
As newlyweds, my wife and I crossdressed for a Halloween party and when I mentioned our party plans to Mom over the phone, she asked if I had taken my box of "stuff" with me when I moved out.
I don't recall my response, but at that moment, I knew she knew. She never mentioned it again and neither did I.
However, once in awhile right up to her death, she would ask me, "Is there anything you want to tell me?"
I always thought she was referring to my crossdressing when she asked and I always said, "No."
In retrospect, I wish I had confided in Mom about me becoming a woman. She was so loving and so supportive that I think she would have helped me. (She was a great seamstress by the way and I can only dream about the outfits she might have sewn for her male daughter.) But, I did not confide in her and I regret it now.
But, if there is a heaven, I am sure Mom smiles down on me when she sees her firstborn dressed en femme enjoying her time as a woman.
So, Happy Mother's Day, Mom.
Your Loving Daughter,
Stana
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| Wearing BB Dakota (source: ShopBop). |
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| Mother and her son, a womanless beauty pageant contestant |
