I wish my sons would call me ‘mum’, but they can’t. Maybe they still remember me as a tough guy?

My son asked me not to show up, so I spent New Year’s Eve by lamplight in a tiny room. The year was 2000, he invited his friends to our apartment in Ursynów, they were drinking and singing. He came to me just after one with a bottle of champagne to wish me a happy new year. We took a sip and he went back to the party while I quietly worked at the computer. I wasn’t thinking about myself at the time or whether I was sad. The important thing was that he was there. I just couldn’t go pee, even though the bathroom was next door. With difficulty, but I endured. I waited until two or three, after they’d had some more to drink, and snuck out. I didn’t hold a grudge. I knew I owed it to him.

MAŁGORZATA: MUM IN THE HEAD

Małgorzata is 71 years old. She has been retired for three. She taught chemistry at university and worked for an international corporation as an analyst until the day her boss called her. ‘We can’t extend your contract, you know, changes in the company structure.’ She just said: ‘Stop lying, I know what you mean’.

When she was young, she wanted to have children. She dreamed of giving birth to them herself. ‘Even when living in my previous form, I had a maternal instinct’, she says.

By ‘previous form’, Małgorzata means the 50 years she lived as a man, even though she knew for nearly 25 that she wasn’t one.

‘If it were possible to get pregnant, I would have tried. Even by risking my own life. Carrying a baby in my belly was a greater desire than the change to live as a woman itself. I wanted to be one to the fullest.’

She knew it was impossible. There may be physical changes in the body of a transgender woman taking female hormones or undergoing surgery, but she will never have ovaries or a uterus. So, at the age of 25, Małgorzata formally became a father.

She met Bożena, a senior assistant at a university as well as an opera singer, in 1968. She saw her in a lecture room. She was captivated by her unusual beauty, she was lovely. Their wedding took place in Warsaw, two years later Hubert was born, then Mateusz. Małgorzata treated them as a mother would. Neither his wife nor his children knew that, in his head, dad was referring to himself as a woman: she cuddled, she changed, she fed.

IZA: I NEED TO STOP

‘I went into construction because my friends were doing it. You were given clothes and could make a quick buck because the internships were paid. I’ve been doing bathrooms and finishing houses for over 40 years now. I leave something of myself behind. These are my rooms, I’ll be gone, but they’ll still be there’, says Iza, 65, from Gdańsk.

She remembers walking with her mother near the Syrena cinema. She was three, maybe four years old, had long, dark hair with curls. ‘Oh, what a lovely daughter you have’, said a woman passing by. Iza felt bliss, even though she had a boy’s body, a boy’s name, and was raised as a boy.

She remembers being jealous too. Of mothers with children, pregnant women, and women in general. She was a teenager, she would walk around town, see some girls and feel a pang. ‘I couldn’t fully explain it, but I felt something was “not quite right”’.

In order to cope with this feeling, she would run away. To the meadows or the embankments by the tracks, where there was no one and where she could put on women’s clothes. ‘If only for a moment, a wonderful feeling. But I didn’t know if I had any right to that euphoria, and only dressed like that did I feel like myself. I went home thinking I needed to stop, wondering why I had those tendencies, that I should seek treatment.

MAŁGORZATA: I COULDN’T STAND IT

Małgorzata did not avoid her duties at home; her friends were surprised that she spent so much time with her children, changing them, carrying them in her arms, taking them for walks. Her wife was happy about it, she had time to sing. ‘My sons were my whole world, I was in my dream role.’

The turning point in her life came in the mid-1970s when she hitchhiked to southern France, Italy. She visited the Côte d’Azur and moonlighted by planting almond trees. And she went to every bookshop she encountered to browse through books and newspapers. She hoped to find an article about people who, despite having male bodies, dream of a woman’s body and life, just like she did. And she did, she realised she was transgender. ‘What joy! The world suddenly became a friendly place’, she says with a smile. But so what? After all, she had little kids. ‘I was afraid they’d take them away from me, so I said to myself: “Forget it, for the sake of the family”’.

On her way back to Poland, she decided she would endure in a body that was not hers, and the world would never know about her. But there was no way she could endure it. After 20 years of struggling with herself, she decided if she was to continue living as a man, it was better to die.

She wanted to make it look like an accident. She had a plan: she would drive her car down to the Vistula River. She sent her sons back to their grandmother and began to pray before leaving the house. And she felt a weight on her shoulder, as if God himself wanted to stop her. She fell to her knees, promised him she wouldn’t get behind the wheel and would change everything from now on. She would only live as Małgorzata.

IZA: IT HELPED TO FANTASISE

‘I was in hospital’, Iza continues, ‘with a big belly. I could feel the baby moving, kicking. I was already waiting to go into labour. When I woke up, Jesus, how I cried. I felt terribly hurt. Why, for what?’, she asks. She cried because it was just a dream. A realistic, wonderful one, but a dream nonetheless. After all, she knew she could never be pregnant, even though in her mind she was a woman. Because her body said otherwise.

‘It still pains me that not only could I not be myself for 30 years, but I had to forget about motherhood too.’

She was 20 when she met Halina. A party at a friend’s house, exchanging glances, and that smile of hers. They got married after knowing each other for six months. It was natural for both of them that since they were married, there would be children as well.

However, in order to make love to her wife, Iza had to fantasise. She usually imagined two women caressing each other. Only picturing scenes like this in her head made her physically able to have sex. ‘I was ashamed of it, but I was glad that I could do it at all, that it would allow us to have children’.

MAŁGORZATA: IT JUST SLIPPED OUT

Małgorzata got divorced many years before deciding it was the end of her life as a man. Her wife didn’t even know what her husband was going through, she went to Austria to pursue a career. Their sons stayed with Małgorzata. ‘I considered it my duty to raise them’, she states. People said how brave she was. Because to those around her, she was a father raising his children on his own.

When she decided to go public, she feared that she would destroy her sons’ lives. ‘I told the truth about myself on Mateusz’s 18th birthday. To this day, I feel guilty about doing it at a time like that. But the whole family got together, and I knew there wouldn’t be a chance like this any time soon’.

She came to the party wearing a suit. She wanted to hide her breasts growing from female hormones so there would be no fuss. Unaware, her sister began making jokes about her in the kitchen, then Małgorzata took off her jacket and said: ‘I’m a woman, I’m changing, I’m going to have surgery’. ‘I didn’t plan it, it just slipped out...’.

It was a shock to her family and her sons. Mateusz became cold, offended. He was afraid of what his life would be like with ‘a father like that’.

IZA: WHAT AM I GOING TO TELL THEM?

In the early '80s Iza knew nothing about transgenderism, she thought she just had ‘weird tendencies’. She needed Halina not only because she was in love with her. ‘I also thought that maybe marriage would help me, that if I had a woman close by, the temptation to dress and live like a woman would pass’.

But over the following years, she just pretended to be okay in front of her wife and herself. She didn’t want to live by Halina’s side as her husband, she wanted to live like Halina. Since she couldn’t, she decided it was better not to live at all. ‘I tried to kill myself many, many times during our marriage’.

And more remorse, because there are children. First Monika was born, and a year later – Staszek. ‘I remember picking them up from the hospital, crying with happiness because, after all, I had something to live for. And with despair because I didn’t know if I could do it if I couldn’t be myself.’

She felt she shouldn’t pursue it. She was afraid that in time she would lose her children. Because what was she going to tell them? That dad will look like mum from now on?

IZA: HOW PRETTY YOU LOOK

‘I was horrified by this and delayed the decision to have surgery as long as I could. I went to doctors in Łódź and Warsaw, I was hoping they would cure me. I wanted so much to be a normal person. But everywhere I heard that it doesn’t work that way’.

She made one last suicide attempt. She took a handful of pills and was barely saved. She realised that in order to live, she had to be herself. She brought Halina a short article about an athlete who was undergoing a similar change somewhere in the US, and put the newspaper in the wife’s hand. She started crying: ‘What are you doing?!’. She had suspected what was going on with Iza, and had hoped that it would pass. It was the beginning of the end of their marriage.

Iza couldn’t stop thinking that she would lose her children after the divorce. That she wouldn’t be able to win them over, that they would reject her. ‘I tried to give them as much love as I could. I decided not to be a father or a mother, but to be the best parent in the world, so they wouldn’t feel that I would become someone else after the change’.

Not a day went by without the word “love” uttered to her daughter or son. Monika was eight at the time, Staś was seven.

‘When I first came to them dressed like a woman, I wore a long, ankle-length, flowing skirt with a colourful pattern and light make-up – mascaraed eyelashes, lipstick on my lips. They just said: “Daddy, how pretty you look!”’, Iza laughed. ‘This is one of the most beautiful moments of my life. They accepted me as if it were perfectly normal.’

Sometimes one of them asked: ‘Why are you changing so much?’. Iza explained that it had to be this way if she was to live and be able to be with them.

MAŁGORZATA: TEARS STREAMING DOWN MY FACE

Małgorzata lived with her younger son until 2005. Not everyone in the block knew about her, and Mateusz was afraid that if someone realised he was her son, they would beat him up in front of his building. ‘He never told anyone about me. When they asked about his father, he would change the subject. It was impossible to walk by the block together. He was a young boy, he reproached me for not being able to bring a girl because he was afraid that she would dump him the moment she saw what kind of a father he had. That she’d think it was perversion, perhaps something hereditary. I was heartbroken, everyone was abandoning me. I had one friend’.

More than once, they tried to beat Małgorzata up on the estate. Boys from the neighbourhood accosted her, called her names like ‘pederast’, waved their fists at her, and threatened her: ‘We’ll beat the shit out of you, pervert’.

That’s why she never left the house with her son. When they had to go to the city for shopping, Mateusz would go to the bus stop first, five minutes earlier. Małgorzata would come after him. They would pretend they didn’t know each other and sit down separately, he at the front of the bus, she at the back. It wasn’t until they got to the city centre that they would start talking.

‘It was horrible both for him and for me. Mateusz also asked what would happen if they found out about him at school. He was afraid he wouldn’t have any friends. He asked me not to show up, under any circumstances, at the parent-teacher conferences. It was his senior year of high school, and he thought that the teachers may frown on him and fail him on his final exams because of me’.

Hubert, the elder son, was already living on his own when she came out and did not experience any unpleasantness on a daily basis. But Małgorzata often heard from him that she had destroyed his life, that his career wasn’t successful because of her. He worked in the media and was about to be promoted to a managerial position. He came to work and found ‘Super Express’ on his desk, open on the page with an article about Małgorzata and her photo. It was a signal that everyone knew. His colleague got the promotion.

Recently Hubert made her cry. He came to her with an architect, she was looking at the attic where Małgorzata wanted to arrange a room for Mateusz. And at one point at the table, the son mentioned something about his mother. ‘I said: “What are you talking about?”, and he said: “What? I’m talking about my mum”. I left the room, tears streaming down my face. He meant the other mum. I can’t imagine what this architect must have thought. Can you imagine? She must have wondered who I was to him. I know there’s the other mum, I call her biological, but I was the one who raised the kids, and I was both mother and father to them’.

Hubert never apologised for the incident. But afterwards, he admitted that he loved Małgorzata and hugged her. He appreciates the way she looks after his children. She’s a grandma. Because he accepts who his father is, although he would probably prefer things to be the way they used to be.

IZA: FEELING GUILTY

At the divorce hearing – in Poland people who undergo gender reassignment must divorce, there is no law that allows them to remain in a same-sex relationship – even the judge explained to Iza’s wife that it was not her fault, that she had to go through this.

Eventually, Halina accepted that she had unknowingly married a woman. ‘We would go shopping together, she would advise me like a friend. She’d say: “Take this skirt, you look so pretty in it”. For that, I have a great deal of respect for her. And for not telling me to “get out”, cutting me off from my children and forbidding them from contacting me. I worked a lot during the week, but sometimes I took them with me to the construction site. Not a weekend went by without a family dinner for the four of us in our former house that I built with my own hands.’

Although Halina has started a new life with someone else, Iza feels guilty. Because maybe she shouldn’t have, maybe she lied, maybe she was thinking about herself, maybe she should have warned her? ‘But sometimes you make a choice and you’re uncertain whether it was the right one. Sometimes you hurt someone in the process. I didn’t mean to, but I did. Sometimes I feel that burden to this day’.

IZA: AUNTIE IS MY DAD

Iza never thought of herself as a mother, but as a parent, impersonally. ‘I am unable to do otherwise, as a conscious human being I cannot say that I am a woman’.

The kids haven’t called her ‘dad’ for years, but neither have they called her ‘mum’, Iza would feel weird. That’s why Mother’s Day is like any other day for her. ‘It wouldn’t feel right because I know I’m not their mum. They call me by my first name. They switched to “Iza” pretty quickly, which is very nice. We make jokes about it, my son says: “Happy Father’s Day, Iza”, we laugh about it, take it in a fun way’.

In everyday life, Monika and Staszek call Iza ‘auntie’ in front of others. But when her daughter was getting married, she told her in-laws: ‘My aunt is actually my dad’. The family later met at her grandson’s birthday party. There were no questions or comments. The grandson calls Iza ‘grandma’. ‘When I hear “grandma’s here”, it fills my heart with joy. That’s the role I accept, strange, isn’t it?’

Monika is 31 today, Staszek is 30. They don’t talk to Iza about the past. If they wanted to know more, she wouldn’t avoid talking about it. ‘But I don’t feel like it’s a topic for them. I think what matters is that I’m with them, and I love them. We see each other almost all the time, we call each other. They don’t need it or they know it might be painful for me, they don’t ask because they want to protect me.’

Although Iza is not sure if she hasn’t complicated their lives by being herself. ‘I don’t know what they said about me to their friends or if anyone laughed at them. And kids can be nosy. Calling me “auntie” forced them to deceive, lie. I don’t know how they felt at the time’.

MAŁGORZATA: DEAD DAY – MOTHER’S DAY

Today, Mateusz is 41, Hubert is 46. They don’t remember about Mother’s or Father’s Day. ‘And I wish they remembered about the former. I don’t get any flowers or wishes from them. Sometimes I get wishes from my colleagues, but that’s on Women’s Day. Mother’s Day is a dead day in my life.’

‘I dream of my sons calling me their mother. They know that. I told them a couple of times, but I’m not going to push it. It’s not real if you need to force it. I don’t know why they don’t call me that, maybe they still remember me as this tough guy who endured seven months of interrogation in the Rakowiecka prison, and even though they threatened to put his children in an orphanage, he didn’t say a word about his colleagues from Solidarity’.

When Małgorzata told her family about herself in 1999, she began to lose them. First her mother moved away, then her brother, her sister. ‘What are you doing, you’re dragging yourself and your whole family down’. They said she was crazy, they wanted to isolate her, put her in a mental institution. That year, she spent Christmas alone. ‘I had no home, no mother and no children. Everyone was breaking off contact with me. I was in a void. It’s only been two years since my sister finally started treating me like a sister’.

Shortly afterwards, Małgorzata decided to undergo vaginoplasty, which means the removal of male genitals and the formation of female ones. ‘I will never forget that – only Mateusz came to see me in the hospital in Gdańsk, although he was still afraid of what would happen next. I lay in pain after surgery, he sat scared, terrified of what I had done, but he was the only one who showed me some kindness. He showed that he was still my son’.

As we speak, Małgorzata and Mateusz have just returned from a trip to the forest. ‘My son asked if I would go with him, I agreed without hesitation. We walked 13 kilometres with the dog; me and my son on a walk for many, many hours. What a great feeling. To walk with him, talk to a grown man, a son. If only he’d called me “mum”, just once’.

The identity of the characters in the text has been changed

 

Author: Paula Szewczyk

Illustration: Marta Frej

The text was published on wysokieobcasy.pl on 28 May 2022