This Is How It Always Is

“My daughter will be named Poppy. Not a decision. A realization.” 

Penn’s prediction about Poppy foreshadows Poppy’s eventual transition. It also implies Frankel’s position on gender identification as being a personal truth as opposed to a choice

“Crying girls, even ones who were going to be fine and whose parents were on their way, broke Rosie in a way none of her other cases did.” 

Rosie’s enduring trauma is her sister’s death. Throughout the novel, we see this formative experience shape Rosie’s decisions and affect the course of her life.

“I need another dress. A short, informal one for school.” 

Claude’s demand for a dress is his first clear assertion of his preferred gender identity. It foreshadows his journey to becoming Poppy.

“She had, she figured, three, maybe four inches before Claude’s hair grew over his ears and she lost him, possibly forever.” 

Throughout the novel, Rosie mourns the loss of Claude as Claude transitions into Poppy. Furthermore, this quote points out that while Claude is in kindergarten, the only major difference between boys and girls is the length of their hair. This distinction becomes increasingly complicated as Poppy approaches puberty. 

“You chose me. You chose us.” 

Rosie recognizes the self-restraint that Penn used not to get into a physical altercation with Nick Sr. after Nick Sr. insulted and threatened Poppy. When Penn admits he wanted to punch Nick Sr. in the face, Rosie thanks him for choosing his family over this instinct. Again, the book shows the importance of family and the difficult, sometimes counterintuitive, decisions that Rosie and Penn make to protect their family.

“And then it got worse because Kim asked the Ouija board when will Poppy grow boobs, and everyone giggled.” 

Frankel introduces the increased challenges surrounding Poppy’s identity as Poppy approaches puberty. While her friends are beginning to develop into women, Poppy must now decide either to allow her male anatomy to develop or to take hormone blockers to postpone the decision around the physicality of her gender expression.

“You wrecked our whole lives for this place.” 

Whereas for Poppy, Seattle is a utopia where she can express exactly who she wants to be without the shadows of the past, for Roo, Seattle erases the history of who he was. He had a social life and a stable sense of self in Madison, but in Seattle he must reinvent himself. This change highlights Rosie and Penn’s balancing act as parents, showing how the decisions they make with Poppy’s interests in mind affect their other children. 

“ […] the Walsh-Adams clan tried to look believable.” 

While having dinner with the Grandersons, the Walsh-Adams children must cover up a reference to Claude, creating tension within an otherwise pleasant evening. 

“She doesn’t think of herself as a boy. You don’t think of her as a boy.” 

Mr. Tongo explains to Rosie and Penn that their nurturing household has protected Poppy too much from the realities of how trans people are perceived by society. Mr. Tongo warns them that with puberty coming, Rosie and Penn are going to have to prepare Poppy for these perceptions from the outside world.

“The navy should be rainbow-colored, but it’s totally not.” 

Much to Penn and Rosie’s relief, Roo reveals the intended satire of his short video on transphobia in the military, a moment that represents a turning point in Roo’s emotional well-being.

“It was June before anything else broke. When it did, it wasn’t as obvious as a gushing head wound, but it was less easily repaired.” 

The author alludes to the soon-to-come reveal of Poppy’s secret at school, which will wound Poppy’s self-confidence and force her to question her identity. This event also catalyzes Rosie and Claude’s trip to Thailand.

“But Poppy’s body is wrong. It’s always been wrong.” 

In the middle of a fight with Rosie, Penn shows his reductive thinking. Penn believes that gender reassignment surgery can fix Poppy’s challenges. Rosie argues back that the issue is much more complicated than just Poppy’s body.

“This story, like all the stories told in his household, was starting to smell suspiciously like there was going to be a moral to it.” 

In Part 2, however, this use of storytelling for purposes outside of entertainment extends to Poppy’s older brother Ben, illustrating its influence in their family. To the Walsh-Adams family, fairy tales become a kind of truth-telling, a way of framing and coping with the realities of the world. Here, Ben uses a story to illustrate to Claude that he will do more harm than good by shedding and denying his feminine side—that Claude without Poppy is not a full expression of his selfhood or potential.

“It doesn’t matter who I want to be [...] It only matters who I am.” 

In Part 3, Claude faces reductive understandings of gender and, as Mr. Tongo predicted, contends with outside perceptions in addition to the loving support of his family. Amid Claude’s pain at his secret being discovered, he reverts to a traditional, simplistic understanding of gender in order to punish himself. At this point in his life, Claude values how society views gender more than his own true expression of it for himself.

“He’s just...he’s writing a story instead of living our life.” 

Rosie elaborates on the flaws she sees in Penn’s idealism. Here, she articulates the key reason they cannot see eye-to-eye on the issue of Poppy’s transition: Rosie fears that Penn does not fully understand the gravity of the situation and instead lives in a fantasy. This fantasy could have dangerous consequences for their child.

“The transformation on offer here isn’t magic. It isn’t instantaneous, and it isn’t painless. It’s years and years of frog kissing. It’s frog kissing for the rest of your life. It’s frog kissing with nasty side effects and unpredictable outcomes you can’t undo if you change your mind that results maybe in your being more princess and less scullery maid than before, but not quite in your being all princess and no scullery maid.” 

Rosie articulates her fundamental difference in perspective with Penn regarding the possibility of Claude’s permanent and/or biological transition to becoming Poppy. She reveals that she believes hormone blockers could possibly hurt Claude’s body and growth and might not yield a full transformation the way Penn thinks that they will. This disagreement about the use of hormone blockers comes to symbolize Rose and Penn’s fundamental ideological differences and ultimately leads to Rosie leaving for Thailand.

“They were beautiful and they were everywhere, and everyone seemed to know their secret, and no one seemed to care, which, Claude guessed, meant it wasn’t really a secret at all.” 

For the first time, Claude sees trans life as normalized in Thailand. This affirmation that other people share his position in the world puts Claude on the path to self-acceptance and encourages him to embrace Poppy. This section also highlights the rigid ways in which the Western world sees gender. 

“Seeing it was like a benediction. Seeing it was like a laceration. There were too many miles in between them to reach across and cup his hands around this precious flame, his arms around this precious child. This precious girl.” 

While in Thailand, Claude reverts to his male identity as self-inflicted punishment for what he perceives as having lied about his life as Poppy. Rosie and Penn fear that the experience will permanently damage Claude’s sense of self. However, through teaching English at a school in Thailand, Claude begins to gain back a sense of curiosity and wonder, namely through telling and being told stories. For a moment, Penn sees a spark of Poppy’s joy and feels a wave of relief. The fact that Penn identifies this joy with Poppy indicates Penn’s consistency in identifying Claude/Poppy as a girl, showing Penn’s unique ability to reflect Poppy’s sense of self back to her and validate her identity and life choices.

“Sometimes it was calling for peace, keeping fighting and fear at bay, reminding people to choose calm, choose love. Let be.” 

In Thailand, Rosie learns the power of dispelling fear by observing the way of life around her. She carries this lesson back with her to the United States and applies it to raising her children.

“You were in the yellow baby room longer than anyone.” 

While Claude struggles to find a sense of self that fits in Thailand, Rosie reminds him that he has never conformed to stereotypical gender roles, not even in infancy. 

“That there were more ways than just two, wider possibilities than hidden or betrayed, stalled or heartbroken, male or female, right or wrong. Middle ways. Ways beyond.” 

In Thailand, Rosie begins to let go of binary thinking in favor of a more nuanced approach to Poppy’s journey.

“[...] an ending for everybody else […]” 

Over the course of telling and then writing the story of Grumwald and Princess Stephanie, Penn learns that there are no finite endings in life. Everybody gets to continue growing, transforming, becoming. The book implies that this is how it always is.

“And Poppy could not be Claude, and she could not hide, and if they could not entirely plan for who she might be in two and ten and twenty years from now, they didn’t need to. They could make hard decisions, together, when it was time to decide, and in the meantime, they could embrace what was now and what was good. They could be mindful of what was hard for everyone, not just what was hard for Poppy, the trouble all humans in the whole world had knowing who they were and what they needed [...]” 

Rosie learns to stop worrying so much about the future and letting fear take away her sense of security. Instead, she begins to embrace life one moment at a time.