How Could I Miss What Was Here All Along
The first of a two-part story about passports in the current U.S. administration
November 2024. Before Trump takes office we send for an updated passport for Ora, 6, with an X gender marker for “unspecified or another gender identity.”
When the new passport arrives, it still has the old gender marker, M. My partner Ray and I are shocked. We stare at the M.
Sometimes the State Department makes mistakes, a friend says.
Ora presses their face into my stomach and sobs.
I’m sorry, I say to Ora as I put the passport into the wooden box that holds the rest of our passports—mine, Ray’s, and Ora’s older brother Colby’s.
*
On inauguration day, the State Department halts passport processing for anyone changing their gender marker and eliminates X as an option.
They do this despite the 60-day notice and comment period required for new federal regulations set out in the Constitution.
Packing for a family trip to Havana, worried about TSA scrutinizing Ora and imagining the worst, I recalibrate their travel outfit. Ora had selected a palm tree dress. I lay out sweatpants and sweatshirt, considering what to do if Ora refuses to put them on. How to be light, downplay it. A wave of grief spreads through my chest.
Or you’ll what?
In the shuttle bus to the terminal the driver has a joke line-up. “Why don’t passports ever feel insecure? Because they’ve got stamps of approval!”
As we ride along, I’m thinking of Ora’s passport. What if, when TSA scans it, an alert appears on the screen indicating that we tried to change the gender marker to X?
The jokes keep coming. “The last time I was at the airport I was threatened by the lady at check-in. She said, ‘window or aisle?’ I replied, ‘window or you'll what?’ ”
I love this joke. It’s about not being able to see your own stress response when the world is not, in fact, making a threat, but making an offer, giving you a choice.
*
A few days before our return flight from Cuba through Fort Lauderdale, I don't notice Colby pull our passports from my bag. I am drinking coffee with Ray and thinking about Florida being one of the states rapidly passing anti-trans laws—is it OK to land there, should we change our itinerary—and don't hear Colby say, Ora come here! Your passport has an X!
Flipped
Suddenly Ora is pulling my sleeve and shouting, Mommy I want to show you something! Look!
Ora’s finger hovers beneath an X. An X where there had been an M.
How.
*
How could I miss what was here all along. If I miss the details, how can I keep my family safe.
*
As a child I watched a magician flip a coloring book in front of my eyes. All the pictures were blank. He flipped the book again. All the pictures were colored in.
I flip the pages of Ora’s passport back and forth, but the X stays.
*
By June I’ve decided to change the gender marker on Ora’s passport back to M. At first I thought keeping the X was right. Two passport changes might be more of a red flag than the X. But now I think X is too much of a target. And they’ll like that we’re complying.
They’ll like that we're complying. A sentence that makes me sick to think.
We're taking Ora to the passport office after school, I tell my mom.
Why did you wait this long to change it back? she says. It’s months since the election! This isn’t a game, Isla, it’s about the safety of your family.
Watch for the second part of this story next week.
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.
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