Free Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt

stripe down the middle indicated where mom sat. Here she’d read to the boys, one son squeezed in on each side. Wyatt’s favorite story was Garrison Keillor’s “Cat, You Better Come Home,” about a certain feline who felt underappreciated. The cat wanted to be special, to stand out, and so one day she ran away from home in order to become rich and famous. Soon there were parties and yachts and unending food, but it turned out to be an empty life. After a while, all she wanted was to be normal again, to be one of the crowd, and so the prodigal cat finally returned home, welcomed back by her owners without a question.
If other cats could only know
    To hang their hats on the status quo,
    And make the best of what they’ve got,
    And be who you are and not what you’re not.
    Both boys were just beginning to figure out who and what they were. They each gravitated to the fictional characters they imagined they’d most like to be. For Wyatt, if it wasn’t a princess, it was the Wicked Witch from
The Wizard of Oz
with long green hair and fingernails—and attitude—or Dorothy with braids and shiny ruby slippers. For Jonas it was the Tin Man—with an ax—or a pirate, like in the movie
Pirates of the Caribbean.
But for now, Wyatt was happy that his parents allowed him to skip off to the first grade dressed in pants and a shirt, but with pink sneakers, a pink backpack, and a pink
Kim Possible
lunchbox.
    After school, the first thing Wyatt did when he got home was to throw off his pants and shirt and put on a skirt or dress—more hand-me-downs from Leah. The halfway dressing for school had been Kelly and Wayne’s decision, a compromise that they weren’t at all sure about. Somehow, they believed it was better to take a middle road for now, to set limits. Wyatt clearly wasn’t happy with the decision, which made Kelly realize maybe it was finally time for him to see a therapist on a regular basis. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy trying to hold Wyatt back, or even that she should hold him back, and knowing he was seeing a professional would make her feel more comfortable about whatever might come next.
    Kelly combed through lists looking for doctors who treated kids for sexual issues. The first psychologist they visited in Bangor told them she worked with children who had been sexually abused, not children with sexual identity issues. Wyatt needed a gender specialist, she told them.
    The next therapist asked Kelly and Wayne, “What kind of underwear does Wyatt use? Does he urinate standing up or sitting down?”
    “Well, he pees standing up,” Wayne answered.
    “Well, then, he’s not transgender,” the shrink said.
    Wayne and Kelly looked at each other and were glad Wyatt wasn’t there. Wayne was nowhere near ready to accept that his son was really his daughter, but he thought the psychiatrist’s questions and reasoning were simpleminded and ludicrous. He and Kelly stood up and thanked the therapist. On his way out the door, Wayne couldn’t help himself.
    “By the way, I pee sitting down, you know.”
    What Wyatt understood about himself, whether he felt different or odd or broken, neither Kelly nor Wayne really knew, until one day Wyatt looked up at his parents and said, “You know, I can have an operation that will fix me.”
    Wyatt didn’t know the word “transgender” and he certainly didn’t know anything about sex reassignment surgery. But somehow he did understand the concept of plastic surgery and that women were able to have their breasts enlarged and their faces made to look younger. If a doctor could give a woman bigger breasts than why couldn’t a doctor give Wyatt little ones? Wyatt was an optimist, mainly because Kelly made a point to never instill doubt in him. She might have been holding him back, but she never discouraged or tried to dissuade him from becoming a girl if that’s what he really wanted. From Wyatt’s perspective, he just somehow knew it would all eventually work out. But