I wrote about our friend Keaton and his family a few days ago. I’m happy to report that a good portion of the funds for Keaton’s top surgery has been raised, which is good, because the surgery is in less than two weeks. Tonight, with my daughter in the bath, I decided to tell her a little bit more about what “top surgery” meant.
I had multiple reasons for bringing this up, one of which was what happens to a female when she reaches puberty. When I asked her if she knew what top surgery meant, she said, “something to do with the heart?” So I explained.
I told her about what happened to girls when they hit puberty and how breasts were a good thing to have, because when I had her, they produced the milk she ate. I had to do a physical, and yes, this means tactile, comparison. She actually didn’t know that boys have flat chests and girls have breasts that stick out. So I showed her.
And I know, I know, this was a necessary thing and was very important to helping my daughter understand female growth in comparison to male growth, but having your child grope your breasts in great detail is a bit odd. It was funny when she said, “eww”. I told her I knew that it was different, but some day she might come to appreciate the breasts she would grow into.
I talked about how visually, women’s breasts stick out and men have flat chests. I said that for someone who already doesn’t feel like they’re the right gender that having them stick out, advertising themselves, was very hard to bear. And that, was what Keaton was going to have surgery on: he was going to have the parts of his breasts removed that he didn’t need, so he could have the chest any other male would have.
She got it in the way a child gets something complicated by looking at it as a whole. So, two birds killed with one stone as the saying goes: now she knows about the breasts she’ll have and also why Keaton needs to have the ones he has, removed.
She got out of the tub, hair now washed, and I got out the BandAids to put one over a scrape on her ankle. She accidentally kicked and knocked over my tin of bandages because she was lying face down on the bath mat so I could get to the spot easily. Without getting up, she started hunting for and picking up the spilled bandages with her toes to hand them to me. I said, “good job with the toes,” and she said, “they’re my favorite tool."
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Tomorrow, my daughter will have a tour of her school with Mr. Adam, her Orientation and Mobility teacher, before returning to campus on Monday. She hasn’t seen him since March. She hasn’t even met her third-grade teacher before and will get to see her for the first time on Monday as well as her favorite VI teachers, with the exception of Mrs. B., who is staying home so she can keep growing her baby which will be born in a few months.
The Big Boy Update: My son did his Mystery History presentation today as Chris Archer, a baseball pitcher from North Carolina. He did the presentation, as did all his fellow classmates, while standing in the doorway of his classroom so that he could have his mask off. The weather outside was blustery with hurricane edges passing by, but the rain held off and the students were well-lit in the overcast and yet strangely bright day. He had a baseball cap and jersey on and I swear, he did the whole presentation with a swagger I’ve never seen before. I don’t think he realized it looked like an affectation of a ball player, but it did to me. He seemed relaxed and wasn’t worried about forgetting parts because he had his notes on the table with the computer in case he needed to refer to them. In comparison to last year when he did this same presentation at the end of October, it was much easier for him I think. He didn’t even do any work at home like the rehearsal after rehearsals from last year.
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