From the Lone Star to the North Star

Heather Crawford — From the Lone Star to the North Star

Alive with love for our next storyteller. And that person here is Heather Crawford. Heather. Come on, come on, let me hear it, let me hear it. She’s right here. Just a short walk, come on, I need some more noise. My name is Heather Crawford and I am a Texan. And I realize introducing it that way makes it sound kind of like I’m introducing myself at an AA meeting, but that’s really not an inappropriate metaphor for how Texans feel about the state of Texas. We are firmly convinced of our state superiority in every way, and we will fight you for it. But I am now a Minnesotan. My family and I, we moved to St. Paul in August of 2022, because as it turns out, my Texan child, is transgender.

Yeah. And I don’t know if any of y’all are following what Texas is doing to its transgender children, but I’d like mine to stay alive. So after a lot of research and trying to figure out where we could go, we ended up here. And there is so much I love about Minnesota that I was completely taken by surprise by. I, in all, legitimately, in all honesty, love the winter. Last year was like, oh my god, I’d never shut up about it, it was so good. I love the Mall of America. I am endlessly fascinated by the Skyway downtown. It’s just, there is so much here that I love. And I have tried for the last 15 months to stop loving Texas, and I cannot. When we moved here, the house that we bought in St. Paul, we bought it sight unseen because I’m stupid and I make bad choices.

And the first time I saw it was 30 minutes after I closed on it. And it’s beautiful. It was built in 1924, so it’s 99 years old. It has so much character and charm. It’s lovely. It’s so cool. And it’s collapsing. Which we didn’t find out about until about two months ago. We realized that there’s a very uneven part of the floor in our master bedroom. And so we had someone come out and look at it. He was like, yeah, your beams are all going to fall down in the next two years. Super news. So… I feel like that house is a pretty good metaphor for who I am personally. Because I look okay on the outside, like I’m standing up and that’s all fine. But I am constantly, every single day I wake up furious that I am here.

And I cannot be furious because my job is to keep that 17 year old of mine alive. and to help them understand that we made the best decision that we could for them. This has been an unspeakably difficult year for them, making this transition. We left behind everything they’d ever known. Their entire family is there. The only schools they’d ever gone to were there. All of their friends, everything. And I don’t really have the words to explain what it feels like to look into your child’s face and tell them that they have to move because the only home they’ve ever known wants to eradicate them. And there were about four months between when my husband and I made the decision and when we actually moved.

And in those four months, my kid had a panic attack severe enough that I had to give them Klonopin about twice a day. And there’s… There’s no answer to the question, why is this happening? And I heard that over and over again. Why is this happening? Why is this happening? But I have to act like this is a good thing that we’re here. And don’t get me wrong. It is a good thing that we are here. I am grateful every single day that we were able to get out of Texas, because there are a lot of trans children who can’t. And I would tell you all, be proud of your state, because it is unbelievably, exponentially easier to raise a trans child here than it is anywhere else. Minnesota is as good as it gets. I am thrilled that we are here. But every day I think about what I left behind and what I miss.

And I miss the summer in Texas, which is just as silly as saying I love the winter in Minnesota. But I do. I miss cicadas, the great big tree bugs that make horrible noises that you can’t think when they’re screaming. But I miss… the sound of cicadas. I miss sitting on the driveway at midnight with a beer in my hand and the temperature differential between the beer and the air is so great that the label is falling off the bottle. We don’t have fire pits in Texas. We don’t have fireplaces in Texas. What we do is sit on the driveway at midnight and drink beer. And you can feel the heat that the concrete has soaked up all day, releasing and burning the backs of your thighs. And that’s where we have these slow, deep, thought-provoking questions. And that is, I miss everything about that.

I resent the fuck out of Texas. I hate Texas. I love Texas. And I wanna go home. trying to keep it together. Thank you, Heather.