When my ex-husband first began to dress as a woman, my second husband, Tommy, and I invited her to our home. "You look great," I said as I kissed her cheek. "But you need earrings." I placed my mother's clip-ons on her ears. "They're only costume," I added as I handed her a mirror. "Faux pearls."

I would've never envisioned this scene when my first marriage fell apart in 1990. It was only in 2011, when I was already married to Tommy, that my ex-spouse told me that she was transgender. Through Transparent, the show my daughter Jill created inspired by our family life, I've met many trans women who told me of the pain of keeping the giant secret, some who felt as if they were trapped in a false marriage.

For me, that's not exactly how it happened. I can still remember how our courtship began, 55 years ago in Chicago. I watched as he walked to the park bench where I was waiting. I was 21; he was 22, tall and slim, towering over me by a foot. I had a crush on him, but he had a girlfriend. I worried about the two of them: Did she appreciate his offbeat sense of humor as much as I? Was she impressed with his ease with classical music and world events, which seemed over the heads of our usual crowd? Did she swoon when he came into view? "Didn't he say why he wanted to meet you?" my mother asked me after his mysterious phone call the night before, her voice annoyed because he was taken. But he wanted to be with me. We kept our romance a secret until he ended his relationship, and a year later, with my sullen mother and an uncle replacing my deceased father walking me down the aisle, we were married.

We started out as a chipper young couple in a third-floor walk-up on Chicago's North Side. I played housewife, a role I didn't question. Our mornings began sweetly, with my attentive husband dropping me off at the school where I taught third grade. "Love you. See you tonight," I'd say. It was three years later on our way to Fort Devens, in Massachusetts, where he fulfilled his military requirement, that I turned to him and said, "I think I might be pregnant." "Yes, yes!" was all he said. After two years and the birth of our daughter Faith in 1964, we returned to Chicago where our second daughter, Jill, was born.

Soon, though, our young-married happiness began to fray. Instead of digging to uncover my husband's gloom, I carped to friends. "He's so moody," I'd tell them. "Maybe he's feeling overwhelmed with two kids." They'd sympathize, poor me. But I didn't wallow; I found a project we could do together: We moved again—in total 12 times during our 30-year marriage. Our most memorable spot was a townhouse on the Near South Side, in a development that encouraged people of different races, incomes, and ages to be neighbors. South Commons was anchored by a community center, with activities that blended its disparate residents. And that's where I believe our deep unhappiness took seed. When I look back at the years we lived there, I see my 31-year-old self transformed. The moment I walked into the center I felt as if I were Dorothy leaving dull Kansas for Technicolor Oz. Within a month I became editor of the community newspaper, producer of the musical theater, and head of the tenants organization. The housewife had vanished, and in her place was an exhilarated, admired new woman.

I felt as if my husband hated this version. "You're never home," he'd say, his face dark and his voice sad. "And when you are here, you're on the phone or typewriter." I couldn't dispute this nor admit that I was happier apart from him.

At the time I thought his pain was because he missed his wife, the little domestic who catered to him. But now I have a different theory. I imagine her thinking, while witnessing my shedding one identity for another, Why is Elaine allowed to change? Why not me? When do I get to be happy? But whatever she felt, I knew nothing. There were no signs, no suspicions. And when she finally left, carrying a gym bag of overnight clothes, we both cried. We knew we had reached the end. Ours was never an angry divorce, just a sad one.

How I wish there had been another park bench, where we could have been honest with each other—at least I might have had the choice of staying with her. In recent years, my ex has told me she was angry that I let her go so easily. Why didn't I fight to keep her? I think she was really asking, Why didn't I dig harder to learn her truth? But it was a time of intolerance of gender differences, and because I was so dispirited I might've taken her reveal as an excuse to leave. I could be a martyr, win sympathy.

While it's too late to travel backward, the present for my former spouse and me is comfortable and rewarding. We've remained friends throughout our divorce and my second marriage, and choose to live within walking distance of each other in downtown Chicago. She helped me through Tommy's hospitalization and eventual death in 2012, something I'll always be grateful for. We lunch together and go to movies frequently and, as many our age do, brief each other on doctors' appointments. When we talk about what we're reading or the film we've just seen, I remember the initial attraction: She is so bright and worldly. Her intelligence has always been a lure.

At our get-togethers, we, of course, marvel at our amazing daughters. Perhaps that's one reason we have always chosen amity over anger: We recognize that our girls are a blend of the both of us. How could we not be grateful for our marriage?

I think about my late mother now, who long ago had disdained the 22-year-old's attention to me because he belonged to another. Mom, I would tell her, you were right; just not the girl you were thinking of.

I think she was really asking, Why didn't I dig harder to learn her truth?

This article originally appeared in the November 2015 Issue of Harper's BAZAAR.

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