Sometimes a Side Is Chosen For You

She was such a tomboy, her mother decided to make her more girly. She dressed her in frilly pink and stuck bows in her hair. She wanted to put fake nails on her, but Daddy nixed that. She is fine, he told her. Let her be the way she is. The more Daddy took her side, the closer she came to daddy. When she came out in the ninth grade, she did not tell her mother. She and her mother were distant, aloof and often estranged. Mother was busy teaching her four-year-old boy to shoot guns. He had no interest in them at all; he was a kind sensitive soul. Hunting and killing were never going to be something he would do. The mother spent her life wondering why her children never visited. They were at her ex-husband’s house every weekend though.