Stuck in the Middle With You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan Read Free Book Online Page A

two years and two months old, didn’t know how much trouble Sean had been in, or how much trouble he continued to be in, for the first year of his life. Throughout 1996 and ’97, we had to dose the baby with a syringe of digitalis, morning and evening, to keep the tachycardia at bay.
    All Zach knew was that his brother had at last arrived, and that we had gone from a family of three to a family of four. We laid the sleepingSean in his bassinet. Zach stood there, looking in wonder at his new companion.
    He turned to us. “Mommy, Daddy?” he asked. “Do you think Baby Sean is proud?”
    W E SURVIVED those days. Sean did not die, and instead grew slowly round on breast milk. Zach took his painting seriously. “I call this one Crazy Town ,” he said, showing us a canvas with a series of swirling rectangles. There was paint all over his face. Our house filled with blocks, and books, and stuffed animals, and syringes of digitalis, and tiny pairs of shoes.
    We’d sit on the couch, Deedie and I, our children in our laps, reading Go, Dog. Go!
    “What a party! What a dog party!”
    We’d done it. The days raced by, at the speed of molasses.
    Sometimes I’d look at the boys and wonder, How on earth are you going to teach them how to be men? You, of all people, Boylan?
    But then, this is one of the fundamental contradictions of parenthood—the unending necessity to teach your children lessons that you yourself still have not learned.
    Y EARS LATER , it finally occurred to me to watch Brideshead Revisited again. I couldn’t remember why we’d never finished it. I put the tape in the machine and hit play. The film picked up right where I’d stopped it on a snowy night long ago.
    A young man’s hand reached out and picked a plover’s egg from a bowl and raised it into the air.
    Charles Ryder looked at his new friend Sebastian, with whom he was already in love: He was magically beautiful , Charles says, with that epicene quality which in extreme youth sings aloud for love. And withers at the first cold wind .

I opened my eyes . The game was afoot. I gazed around the dark hotel room, immediately sensing a situation in progress. Deedie drowsed to my left, her chest softly rising and falling. Through the screen door that led to the balcony I could hear the ocean crashing on the beach.
    A voice cut through the darkness. “What now?” it said. “What now!”
    Through the murk I could just make out Zachary’s silhouette. He got up on his feet, and his head peeked over the edge of the portable playpen. I checked the clock. Four A.M .
    Oh God please no , I thought. Sweet weeping Jesus .
    One of Zach’s legs went up and over the rail, followed a moment later by the other. There was a clunk as he hit the floor. Then he stood again. “What now?” he asked. “What now!”
    Then he began to run around the condo. The little feet pattered against the floor. As he ran, Zach shouted, “I’m awake! I’m awake! I’m awake!”
    We were on vacation. Sanibel, Florida. Sean wiggled in his crib. He sat up, took a look around, and began to weep.
    “Waah,” he said. “Waah. Waah. Waah.”
    “I’m awake! I’m awake! I’m awake!”
    Deedie opened one eye. I understood in a glance. “Go get ’em, Daddy. It’s your turn.”
    “Waah, waah, waah.”

    I PUSHED THE STROLLER down the beach. The sun had not yet risen. The breeze blew in off the ocean and whipped my hair around. I was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt, a battered sweatshirt that said WESLEYAN .
    Zach sat in the front of the double stroller, holding a juice box. He pointed out a group of sleeping seagulls. “Birds are dreaming,” he said.
    Sean had fallen asleep again, bottle in his mouth. I remembered what this was like. Something similar had happened to me a couple of times during my sophomore year of college.
    At two years old, we no longer had to give Sean a syringe of digitalis twice a day. Although he was still a pale, thin thing, like an orphaned waif in