My youngest progeny, age 23, is back home, having graduated from college (in the spring) and then filled out the year-long lease without finding a job and new place to live. It's OK, though challenging for all of us. We're trying to make the upstairs into actual living space after having it turn into a large and jam-packed storage area (like the basement is . . . and much of the rest of the house too, unfortunately).
I'm thinking - if not working for someone else, the kid can work for us to earn spending money - and has been doing so, yard work for the last couple of days. After that - some household dreck purging? Helping us part with some of the thousands of books / videotapes / magazines?
The hardest part of the transition is working to adjust pronouns, as the former young man moves through the steps to become a young woman. Can't say "he" anymore, but "she" doesn't come trippingly to the tongue either.
I don't know how to talk about it, really. Gender transition hasn't become as common as same-sex preference. My mom lamented, when told about the situation, that it would have been so much easier to handle the kid's coming out as gay - we've got cousins, friends, etc., who have done that, and it's a known quantity.
Will love and trust and a good sense of humor pull us all through this?
In a fairly small house with only one bathroom?
