Publications
Partners
This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel (first published in 2017 by Headline Review)
Claude is 5 years old. He is the youngest of five brothers. And like a lot of children his age, he likes to eat peanut butter sandwiches.
The thing is, he also wants to grow his hair long and wear dresses. He even wants to be a princess one day.
Is this a problem? Many think so, and many others don’t care.
Frankel really captures the struggle felt by Claude’s parents, a struggle a lot of parents with a transgender child have: Do we protect our child?
This often means intervening, restricting him/her from engaging in the ‘behaviours’ frowned upon by society, like when a boy wants to be a fairy and other children tease him for ‘acting like a girl’.
Or alternatively, should parents allow him/her to be and live their truth every day on impulse?
Letting the boy be a fairy, because it makes him happy, despite what the other kids at school might have to say or do about it.
Claude’s father Penn perhaps captures this ambivalence best in his response to a teacher who tells him that if Claude chooses to continue engaging in his ‘behaviours’ then the road will be hard for him going forward.
So, what does he do? He asks why ‘easy’ is necessarily the preferred route. Why should we strive for an ‘easy’ road above a road that sees us overcoming, changing minds and being truly fulfilled?
Penn says that being a parent, in any situation, means making very tough decisions with very little information. Often, it’s all just a guessing game. This is how it always is for parents, and that’s okay. It’s so difficult and even maddening at times, he notes, but hey, there’s really no alternative.
This is a beautifully written account of a family trying to do their best in a world that’s not always so accepting of the ‘other’.
The unknown scares them and makes them uncomfortable because they are not yet prepared to deal with it. They choose the easy road, instead of trying to make pave way for new alternatives.
WATCH: Book trailer – This is How it Always Is
Purchase a copy of the book from Takealot.com.
