A Tornado, a Stranger, and a Passport

May 2025: Wind rips the prayer flags off the cherry tree. The chickens bolt. Loud crack in the backyard: Ora, 6, calls their older brother Colby to the window as a falling limb punches through the roof of our neighbor’s shed. Oh! the kids gasp.

I won’t realize how bad the storms are till morning, when I open my phone to find school is closed due to widespread damage and outages. For many, there will be no electricity or internet for days. Kids will share stories of crushed cars, ruined food, strange candlelit dinners.

At 2 a.m., sleepless, I scroll photos of homes wrecked by the tornadoes, looking for what was left untouched.

The place to be during a tornado is beneath a basement stairwell, the internet informs me. Stairs can support a tremendous amount of weight when your house collapses. 

Unenthused

In the morning I clear old maps, cans of varnish, and stacks of floor tiles from under the basement steps. I paint the walls and hang a camping lantern, then call Ray and the kids down: I have something to show you! Wouldn’t this make a cool fort? 

I don’t say it’s a tornado shelter.

It needs a rug, Colby says, unenthused.

Great idea, I say. Do you think we would all fit under here?

It needs a second lantern, says Ora, one for me, one for Colby. Ray screws in a hook. Ora brings a lantern. The space is brighter.

NO

The next day, on the drive to the passport office to change Ora’s gender marker back to M, I try to think of how to tell Ora and Colby what we’re doing. A voice in my head repeats You’re obeying in advance.

Yes I am, I say to the voice, and Ora is my child and it is my job to keep them safe.

Ora, I say, we’re going to change the gender marker on your passport back to M. I’m sorry.

No! Ora kicks the back of my seat. I’m not doing it!

What to say next. I don’t want to explain why and scare them. I don’t want to teach them to back down.

When Ora refuses to get out of the car, I let slip: Trump’s not being friendly to trans people. We have to get the X off your passport. We’ll change it back after he’s not president! I add, trying to sound positive. 

That’s a lot of years! Ora is crying. I do some mental math. Ora will be ten before Trump’s term is up.

 Yes, I say, unbuckling their seatbelt. It is a lot of years.  

The stranger

Inside, I can hardly look my partner, Ray, in the eye, I feel so terrible. I ask the passport agent which form I should use to change my child’s passport—their passport, I say, pointing to Ora in their pink and purple confetti dress—from X to M.

You can’t change her gender, declares the agent, tapping the sign-in list.

I almost laugh the incompetence—I said X and M and they, not her—but then I see Ora burying their face in Ray’s side. The room is so small they can hear everything.

Legally we can change it back to M, I say, glaring at the agent.

I’ll call you when it’s your turn, she says and stalks to her desk.

A stranger gets up from his chair and comes over to me. You’re right, you can change it back, he says.

A different agent leans over the counter and whispers, We really don’t know what to do with gender markers at this time. Give the National Passport Information Center a call.

I’m handling this one! yells the first agent.

The stranger rolls his eyes behind his wire-rim glasses and says Ignore her.

Solidarity

I dial the Passport Information Center from the hallway, out of earshot. The person who answers confirms we can change the gender marker back to M. She sounds apologetic as she tells me the correct form.

Ray and I fill it out. My hand shakes.

As we’re leaving, Ora says, loud enough for others to hear, No matter what Trump says, trans people exist. A few heads turn. The man in the wire-rims gives Ora a thumbs-up.

*

Later, at our neighborhood swimming pool, Ora is dancing around by the deep end, showing off their new swimsuit to two adults I don’t know. It’s made by Rubies, my favorite company that makes bathing suits for trans kids, Ora is saying.

I keep trying to hush us, but Ora won’t stop talking.

I text Bera, a friend who organizes craft nights for trans kids, to say how awful I feel about losing the X on Ora’s passport. It’s impossible to know what to do under this administration, Bera says. We are all making choices to keep our kids safe. These choices all look different.

When I tell her about the kind stranger in the wire-rims, she says: you’ll never believe it! I just heard from the trans man our group helped support financially a few years back. That was him. He said a little kid in a dress and pink jellies—must have been Ora!—said, on the way out, Trans people exist.

After tucking the kids into bed I call my mom to say we changed Ora’s passport marker back to M. Then I tell her about the tornado shelter. I don’t know how to keep Ora or anyone safe under this administration, but now we have a place to go during a tornado.

I have a rug you can use, she says.

In the morning, the news: while we were at the passport office, a lower court issued an injunction allowing trans, nonbinary, and intersex people to apply for accurate passports again.

Did I make the wrong choice by removing the X?

Allegiances

A few weeks later, when the National Passport Center calls, I duck into our bedroom. On Ora’s passport, I am seeing gender X, and on the application you’re asking to change it to M, the agent says. I stay silent, unsure where the agent’s allegiance lies, who to trust.

She speaks gently: With the injunction and the new policy, we just want to make sure this is what you want.

Yes, I say. It’s not what we want. But it’s what we’re going to do.

*

When Ora’s passport arrives in the mail I’ll run my finger over the M.

And, a few days later, I’ll open another envelope to find Ora’s old passport, the one with the X. The standard hole punched through it to indicate it’s cancelled.

My eyes toggle between the passports, marveling at the X that was there all along and resting, finally, on the M. It’s there. For now.

— I.L.

Isa Lichen is at work on When Leaving Home, a book about life under the current U.S. administration as the parent of a trans child, which explores questions of immigration, including their great-grandfather’s flight from Germany after he brushed shoulders with Hitler in WWI.