Humans have long thought they could control the sex of a newborn, or, at the very least, influence whether a baby would be born male or female.
He seemed tense and anxious, as if his heart was in knots and he didn’t know how to untie them. There was some inscrutable pain behind his eyes. But often it seemed as if the little boy was puzzled by his reflection, unsure of the image staring back. It was impossible to know, and impossible to ask Wyatt, of course. What did the 2-year-old see? Himself? His identical twin brother? As she pulled off Jonas’s clothes and plunked him into the tub, she’d notice Wyatt standing naked and transfixed in front of the mirror. At night, when the boys were very little and she bathed them, Kelly would catch Wyatt staring into the long mirror hanging on the inside of the bathroom door. As if the hunter, the fisherman, the Air Force veteran and the Republican had all been stripped away and the only thing left was the father - but father of what and of whom? Yes, he was a happily married man and the parent of two beautiful boys, but it was also true he was embarrassed by one of them - and he’d just broken that little boy’s heart.įrom a young age, Wyatt was moodier than Jonas he would occasionally lash out at his brother as if frustrated just by his presence. Was everyone at the party looking at him right now? He felt strangely alone, and, worse, unmasked.
He stood there stunned, unable to hear whatever was going on around him, as if deafened by the psychological explosion. The world where he was a father and husband in an ordinary, hard-working, middle-class family had just blown up. Still dazed, Wayne remained downstairs, enveloped in a kind of concussive quiet. “This isn’t really the right time,” Kelly gently told Wyatt, persuading him it would be better, for now, to wear pants and a shirt. How could she explain to him that he’d done nothing wrong when his father had just scolded him? She didn’t think she was ready for this, and yet she knew it was just the beginning. It wasn’t so much the reaction of the people at the party, who were mostly stunned into silence - that was Wayne’s issue - but rather the hurt her son was experiencing, and for no good reason other than that he wanted to wear his princess dress to the family’s party. It was, she knew right then and there, the worst moment of her life. Instead, she raced up to Wyatt, hot tears now streaking his face, took him by the hand and led him back into his bedroom. “Are you going to let him wear that?” Wayne asked. One of Wyatt’s tiny hands grasped the banister the other clutched a glittery wand. Kelly followed her husband’s eyes to the top of the stairs. Kelly, who heard her husband’s strained voice from the kitchen, knew something was wrong and rushed out.
Wayne’s harsh tone cracked through the party chatter, and Wyatt’s little body jerked, then froze. In “Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family,” published this week by Random House and excerpted below, Washington Post science writer Amy Ellis Nutt explores the remarkable story of an ordinary family navigating its way through extraordinary times. Nicole and Jonas, who grew up primarily in Maine, just turned 18. The father would learn the truest meaning of family only after his wife felt forced to file a lawsuit against the twins’ elementary school, and when Jonas told him, at age 9, “Face it, Dad, you have a son and a daughter.” Healthy and happy, they were physically indistinguishable from each other, but even as infants their personalities seemed to diverge.īy the age of 2, when the boys were just learning to speak, Wyatt asked his mother, “When do I get to be a girl?” and “When will my penis fall off?” It was the beginning of a journey through questions of gender that would challenge a mother to find ways to help her child, even as the father pushed back. They were identical twin boys, Wyatt and Jonas Maines, adopted at birth in 1997 by middle-class, conservative parents.