Some Sign

“You aren’t going to let some sign tell you what to do, are you?”

I would like to etch these words on my mother’s tombstone. I have believed for many years she will never die, and so far she has borne this prophecy out. I have been to the funerals of her parents, and her only brother and sister. We have sat next to each other at the shiva of her husband, my father. We have mourned our separate mournings for these people, like two critics who go to the same concert or movie and write different reviews about the ending after the whole thing is over.

My mother never appreciated vampires like my father did and I do, but every time she and I join each other for another funeral (the only time I willingly consent to see her these days), she seems to be ready to take her place in Anne Rice’s or Braham Stoker’s universe. She remains the same. She has been doing her best to tempt the Grim Reaper, but the only indication of her supposedly advancing age is now her drinking leads more often to falling down, which leads to more significant secondary injuries than it used to: a detached retina, a dislocated shoulder. But she handles these injuries in stride, and as the kids would say, these events don’t slow her roll.

I currently make my living by knowing about rules, and their more serious brethren, laws. I go from client to client, learning all of their rules, rules some of the client contacts I work with didn’t even know they had written for themselves. I learn state laws and federal laws about financial institutions and other types of clients. I help them follow these rules, build processes around these rules. The rules often exist to protect their customers, which I think is important. The rules sometime exist to protect the system, which I think is a little less important. But my client contacts are nearly all good people, and they need to protect the system to protect their jobs, so I see my role in helping them maintain their livelihood, and the livelihood of the people who work for them.

I can’t remember the first rule my mother encouraged me to break. I actually can’t remember her specifically telling me to break any rule. I remember her giving herself quite a bit of leeway in this regard, including but not limited to driving the wrong way down some one-way streets in downtown Phoenix while under the influence.

I was expected to be a good, especially as the first/oldest child. I can count on one hand the number of times I was sent to detention: twice. I was significantly late to my Algebra II class in junior high two times. My Algebra II teacher loved me, and I got an A in both semesters of her class, but rules were rules.

My younger brother, on the other hand, was expelled from his/our junior high. I came home from my first semester of college during his expulsion. I had just dyed my hair with Manic Panic for the first time, and my parents were furious at my newly navy blue locks. My brother’s parole officer was about to come for a visit and this is how I dress?

Now we’re both compliance professionals. Extrapolate from that what you will.

But as much as I try to stand apart from my mother, I have inherited some of her traits¸ undesireable and otherwise. I can feel her irreverence lurking within me, like an unexpressed gene. My queerness and my trans identity are instances where my proclivity for bucking the status quo have been brought to life. Did my mother know her propensity for rule breaking was going to manifest itself in this way?

I get on airplanes six to eight times a month since we moved to Denver. I am a compulsive water and coffee drinker (along with the occasional adult airport beverage), so I am constantly using restrooms. When the airplanes take off, there is often a long period of time where I am staring at the illuminated fasten seat belt sign, waiting for it to un-illuminate, so I can run to one of the tiny bathrooms on the plane. And often the un-illumination process takes a lot longer than I think it should. This leads me to carefully surveying the flight attendants, so I can choose the best time to scurry past them and shut myself in a restroom before they can stop me. (If I can close the bathroom door before they get on the intercom to “remind” everyone that the fasten seat belt sign is on, I consider it a success.)

I want to follow their rules, but I also need to pee. I think of this Key and Peele sketch every time. Is it illegal, though?

I like rules, because after the continuous chaos of my childhood, I like routine. I also understand the need to break rules, because as a queer, and especially as a trans person, I understand that the rules of the world around me don’t always want to afford space for me to exist. So I need to break these stupid, shitty rules so I can get on with my life and be myself. These are the juxtaposing forces that have shaped my existence.

My Uncle Ben, my mother’s brother, once wrote in a card to me, “People are going to want to give you a hard time about being who you are. Don’t listen to them.”

And so a tiny part of me reluctantly appreciates my mother, and, unreluctantly, the whole Drew side of the family, during my moments of disobedience. Whenever I am sneered at for having a tattoo, for being queer, for being trans, for being not like anyone else, I feel the Drews standing behind me in spirit.

This is what we ultimately inherit from the people who raise us: what rules and conventions are worth following, and which ones are not. The greatest gift my mother ever gave me was showing me a way around the boundaries of an ordinary life.