Soar, Adam, Soar

by Rick Prashaw

Overview

“Coming out. Coming in. Coming home.”

Adam Prashaw’s life was full of surprises from the moment he was born. Assigned female at birth, and with parents who had been expecting a boy, he spent years living as “Rebecca Danielle Adam Prashaw” before coming to terms with being a transgender man. Adam captured hearts with his humour, compassion, and intensity. After a tragic accident cut his life short, he left a legacy of changed lives and a trove of social media posts documenting his life, relationships, transition, and struggles with epilepsy, all with remarkable transparency and directness.

In Soar, Adam, Soar, his father, a former priest, retells Adam’s story alongside his son’s own words. From early childhood, through coming out first as a lesbian and then as a man, and his battles with epilepsy and refusal to give in, it chronicles Adam’s drive to define himself, his joyful spirit, and his love of life, which continues to conquer all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459742789
Publisher:	Dundurn Press
Publication date:	02/02/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Rick Prashaw has had a diverse career as a journalist, Catholic priest, executive director of a national NGO, and political staff to members of Parliament. He is a winner of the National Ron Wiebe Restorative Justice Award. Rick lives in Ottawa.

Rick Prashaw has had a diverse career as a journalist, Catholic priest, executive director of a national NGO, and political staff to members of Parliament. He is a winner of the National Ron Wiebe Restorative Justice Award. Rick lives in Ottawa.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Can’t Wait

I knew I would write a book about my kid. Just not this book.

Rebecca Danielle Adam Prashaw was born April 22, 1993, in Sudbury, Ontario. Suzanne, her mom, spent only seventeen minutes in labour, and then, swoosh, Rebecca slid into life’s fast lane, never to put her foot on the brake.

As a record of her life and our relationship, I wrote my child a letter each year around her birthday. It took time to realize the letters might someday inspire a book. There was a story I wanted her to appreciate someday — hers, mine, ours.

I was a Catholic priest: a Roman Catholic priest who married when he was forty, becoming an instant stepdad to his wife’s three children, and a year later, a first-time dad to one child, that kid with the interesting name.

I worked as a journalist, too. I like to tell and write stories, and I recognized a story here. The letters, I thought, would bind my story to Rebecca’s story, so when the time was right, she would better understand the first chapters of her own journey. Or so I thought. That there was a book, too, was, well … more a dad’s hunch, a crazy intuition.

The working title for this book idea was Dear Rebecca: Love Letters from a Married Priest to His Daughter. I knew that it wouldn’t be on the Vatican’s blessed books list. That might work in my favour, I thought!

Those annual birthday letters chronicled the year’s events: celebrations, family trips to California and North Bay, camping, cottage visits, outdoor adventures, the pet dogs and rabbit, and a few mundane moments, too, that still somehow captured life’s wisdom. They also recount some madcap misadventures — I confess to a few missteps as a later-in-life dad on training wheels. Memo to Dad: venturing out in winter with your five-year-old onto the Castor River in Russell, Ontario, without first checking the ice is not a good idea; the unexpected polar bear dip to my waist qualifies as “top shelf” in the family legends.

The fifth-year birthday letter reports the epileptic seizures that first appeared out of nowhere at the breakfast table — dark, ominous clouds on an otherwise sunny horizon.

The eighth-year birthday letter tells of my own heartbreak over my separation from Suzanne, the breakup of a marriage that I did not want to end. Damn. Now there would be stories I’d prefer to omit from my book.

More dad letters follow in the next few years, charting Rebecca’s significant challenges in learning and at school, some clearly the consequences of the epilepsy. This would be the place where I would revisit a wickedly fun period of seven years when Rebecca played goalie for various girls’ hockey teams in Kanata, in the west end of Ottawa. Unknown to anyone at the time, what she learned in the goalie crease would tutor my kid for life’s adversities. Tales are emerging, too, of first jobs, hints of first loves, and more.

All in all, I recognized a story worth telling, a tale of a mischievous kid who was impossible to subdue or defeat, a kid wrapped in her parents’ and her family’s love; in hope, worry, and wonder.

But life, and my child, had other plans. Sickness, heartache, and unimaginable, enduring courage elbowed their way into the story. The book that I imagined writing is not the book I am writing. Adam emerged as the co-author.

Adam?

Our Rebecca.

Remember the girl born in 1993 with the boy’s name, Rebecca Danielle ADAM Prashaw? From very early on, Rebecca delighted in her boy’s name. She never tired of hearing the story her parents told of how Adam became part of her legal name. Adam, of course, wanted this story, this book, to be something that he would help to write.

Rebecca was the quintessential tomboy. There were early signs of Adam everywhere — the short hair, cut pageboy-style some years; the “dressed down” rough-and-tumble look. We saw it but didn’t see it. Rebecca was often thought to be a boy, as early on as age two. Rebecca’s mom recalls the tough negotiation she had with Rebecca to get her to wear a First Communion dress. She made a deal that Rebecca could take the dress off right after the pictures — like a flash, Rebecca was gone, and the dress disappeared for a day or two before her mother found it under her bed. Before she pulled the dress off, we snapped the First Communion photo, a nick on her face from the latest mishap and, of course, the short crop of hair.

As friends came into our lives and we were asked the inevitable “number of children” question, Suzanne would say, “I have two girls, a boy, and a wannabe.” In response to their inquisitive looks, she would add, “A girl who wants to be a boy.”

I recall an early, fun conversation with my daughter when I asked her if Dad could at least see his daughter in a dress three times in her life. Could we agree on that? That semi-serious negotiation resulted in Rebecca committing to wearing a dress on three occasions — her First Communion (which she did!), her wedding day, and, hell, I can’t even remember the third day she promised. It doesn’t matter. She reneged. And in the story this crazy kid would live, there actually was a wedding day. Well, sort of, but it was one minus the dress. That story will be told here, in this new book that Adam and I are writing.

Things are clearer in hindsight.

Unquestionably, from that day at Sudbury General Hospital in 1993, it was love at first sight. I was forty-one years old, a new dad, “over the moon” happy. I never saw or had a need to see “Daddy’s little girl” in Rebecca. Well, maybe a little, a nod to that “wearing a dress” negotiation! Indeed, I was punch-drunk ecstatic about being a dad of any child at all.

I guess the gender thing was there from the start. But it would take a lot of years, well into adolescence, for Adam to show up.

***

Adam made his official appearance in 2014, at twenty. His “coming out” was sandwiched between two major epilepsy surgeries in 2011 and 2015. We had called our kid Rebecca, or Becca, for short (and Bekkaa on Facebook), for almost twenty years, from birth through to 2014. I’ve sorted out my Adam/Rebecca story this way: the first happy, healthy childhood years, from birth to five (1993–1998); then the years during which the first series of smaller seizures occurred, from five to ten (1998–2003); then the more-or-less typical preteen and teen years, from ten to seventeen (2003–2011). The final part of the story takes place after the second series of bigger, more threatening seizures start in 2011. It is in the second, scarier epilepsy phase that Adam shows up, writing his own impressive new birth announcement. My co-author can’t wait to tell that story.

There are other stories to tell, too — visits to the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (many call it the Neuro), getting her driver’s licence at sixteen, and a remarkable, life-changing conversation with her mother. Adam wants that in HIS book, too. “Her, she” is history. Adam will become my teacher on pronouns.

Somehow, bound and determined as he was to live a full, normal life, epilepsy and all, Adam, I sense, wanted to stay in the driver’s seat, even after he lost his licence because of his seizures. This is his life, his story. It was him behind the wheel, driving his parents crazy at times in a madcap, fast-lane race to adulthood and the independence he keenly craved. As he endured the epilepsy surgeries, as he chose to come out and come in to Adam, I marvelled at a new meaning of courage.

And through it all, in what was undoubtedly a hard life capped by one cruel catastrophe, he wove in a heap-load of fun. He did it with amazing friends, the steadfast support of family, and most of all abiding steadfastness, as Adam saw it all through to the end.

This is the story of Adam (Rebecca).

Dozens of Adam’s Facebook posts will help tell the story. I have not dared to change a single word. If it seems like Adam appears out of nowhere sometimes to jump into the conversation or start another conversation, well, that’s my son. If you wince at some of his posts, know that I winced first.

Soar, Adam, soar.

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

1. Can’t Wait!
2. “A No-Brainer” #seizurefree
3. A Beautiful Baby Girl
4. “MY Home!” And Facebook Dad
5. In Good Spirits!
6. The “T” Train #transman
7. The Boy in the Mirror
8. Hope Rising Up – Happy New Year!
9. The Cardinal, January 22–24, 2016
10. Dead Enough #beadonor
11. Tania
12. Soar, Adam, Soar
13. Heart, Kidneys, Liver, and Saint Jesus School
14. Celebration of Life
15. Angels in the Snow
16. Give Sorrow Words
17. The Brave Heart
18. Keep Us All Safe in the Storm
19. Fragments

Postlude
Acknowledgements
Image Credits

Editorial Reviews

★ 02/01/2019

When former priest Rick Prashaw's wife was pregnant, she was certain they were having a boy, and even after the child was assigned female at birth, the couple decided to keep Adam as part of their baby's name. "Rebecca Danielle Adam Prashaw" taught his father the power of names, what they hold and how they contain us, especially—but not exclusively—for individuals who identify as transgender. Here, Prashaw, drawing on the words of his late son, relates Adam's coming out as a transgender man, not as something that happened in an event or as a lightbulb moment, but rather that "Adam was there all along." Prashaw captures Adam's challenges with embodiment, not only in relation to gender and sex but also through his struggles with epilepsy. Photos evoke a sense of physical battle, with scars on Adam's face serving as a testament to his great strength. With the honest and empathetic tone of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, this account diverges from foundational memoirs such as Kate Bornstein's Gender Outlaw, Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues, and Julie Serano's Whipping Girl because of its mostly secondhand nature. VERDICT Prashaw's compassionate, authentic, and wise words make this a powerful contribution to the emerging genre of transgender life writing.—Emily Bowles, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison

Library Journal

Soar, Adam, Soar is a gorgeous autobiography. Rick Prashaw's unique approach to co-authoring with his late son and his threading together of social media posts into a cohesive narrative is so fresh and exciting. The themes of non-conforming gender identity, the varied pressure of academia, and the lonely-yet-public stage of social media offers instructors multiple opportunities to bring theory to life. More broadly, the challenges of young adulthood will resonate with many post-secondary readers.

Jennifer Ball

I had the honour of performing the first legalized same sex marriage in Canada and passing more LGBTQ legislation in Canada's history including the first Trans Human Rights in any Province. Fifty years of Queer activism seems worthwhile because of this book. Adam's story is why. Adam is the reason. Adam's loving and accepting family is the point. This book is an answered prayer.

MPP 2006 to 2018 Reverend Dr. Cheri Dinovo

Soar, Adam, Soar is a deeply moving account of tragedy and triumph. Parts of this tale are so compellingly unique that they are hard to imagine. Yet, at the same time, it is a story of love and courage that it is universally recognizable. Thank you, Rick Prashaw, for your raw honesty.

Alex Munter

Rick Prashaw, Adam's father, celebrates life in this moving memoir – joined, in a sense, by Adam himself, whose musings and social-media posts enrich the narrative. The result is both specific and universal.

Booklist

Adam's story is incredibly rich and very moving … It is powerful material through which we examine love, family, gender, sexuality, illness, and spirituality...LIFE (with a heavy dose of cosmic irony). Like any great piece of drama, this story deserves to be heard by a huge audience.

Playwright and creator of the stage adaptation of Ernest Zulia Director

I had the honour of performing the first legalized same sex marriage in Canada and passing more LGBTQ legislation in Canada's history including the first Trans Human Rights in any Province. Fifty years of Queer activism seems worthwhile because of this book. Adam's story is why. Adam is the reason. Adam's loving and accepting family is the point. This book is an answered prayer.

MPP 2006 to 2018 — Reverend Dr. Cheri Dinovo

Adam's story is incredibly rich and very moving ... It is powerful material through which we examine love, family, gender, sexuality, illness, and spirituality...LIFE (with a heavy dose of cosmic irony). Like any great piece of drama, this story deserves to be heard by a huge audience.

Playwright and creator of the stage adaptation of — Ernest Zulia Director

Rick Prashaw, Adam's father, celebrates life in this moving memoir – joined, in a sense, by Adam himself, whose musings and social-media posts enrich the narrative. The result is both specific and universal.

Booklist

Adam's story is incredibly rich and very moving … It is powerful material through which we examine love, family, gender, sexuality, illness, and spirituality...LIFE (with a heavy dose of cosmic irony). Like any great piece of drama, this story deserves to be heard by a huge audience.

Playwright and creator of the stage adaptation of — Ernest Zulia Director

I had the honour of performing the first legalized same sex marriage in Canada and passing more LGBTQ legislation in Canada's history including the first Trans Human Rights in any Province. Fifty years of Queer activism seems worthwhile because of this book. Adam's story is why. Adam is the reason. Adam's loving and accepting family is the point. This book is an answered prayer.

MPP 2006 to 2018 — Reverend Dr. Cheri Dinovo