One Week To Go

Exactly one week from today, I will be undergoing my gender reassignment surgery. In four days, on my birthday, I will go to Colorado, where my surgery will take place.

I pulled out the suitcase I'm going to use for the trip and started to pack. I don't usually start packing so far in advance, and I really don't need to bring very much, as I will be in the hospital for the majority of my trip. Perhaps this is all making me a little obsessive. Just a little. Or maybe it's my giddy nervous energy. Yes, yes, yes, I want that surgery and I want it now. I can think of a hundred things to do between now and then. I will do maybe ten of them; four or five, if that many, absolutely must be done before I leave.

Let's see: The must do's: Pay my rent. Buy a box of maxi-pads. Get haircut and manicure on Thursday. (I have an appointment.) Leave cat food and litter for Millie, who will care for Charlie and Max. And, of course, pack.

The want-to-do's: Go for long bike ride tomorrow. (It will probably be my last opportunity.) Lunch with Bruce on Friday. Buy an iPod. (No, I don't have one. I'm such a dinosaur, aren't I?) A meal and/or tea with Millie and John some time in the next couple of days.

Actually, there are lots of other things I'd like to do that simply aren't realistic possibilities. One is to spend a couple of days in Paris with Marie-Jeanne and Janine. Not only is it logistically all but impossible, it's not do-able because Janine hasn't been well lately. She would try to accomodate me in all kinds of ways, as she's done whenever I've visited her, but I wouldn't feel right about that.

And I'd like to see everyone in my family. But, getting everyone in one place happens about as often as a full solar eclipse, and not everyone in my family wants to see me. Mom's talking about coming "up north" in late July or early August to visit me, my brothers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey (where her aunt also lives) and my aunt and uncle upstate.

My mother's aunt and I talk to each other regularly, and she has been very supportive emotionally. However, I haven't seen her in at least twenty years--during the funeral of another of my uncles. So, whatever pictures we have in our minds of each other are very dated, to say the least.

One week until the surgery...Will this one go by even more quickly than the previous 51 weeks have? Or the previous 51 years? Well, OK, I haven't gotten to that second milestone yet. But when I do, I'll marvel at and lament how quickly tempest has fugitted. I know, no Latin verb is conjugated that way. Then again, who speaks Latin, anyway?

I don't. I also don't wear a beard or drink beer (or any other alcoholic beverage, for that matter). Not anymore, anyway. They are behind me now, just as the military drills and the conquests of mountains and women. As is my attempt at being a husband, as are my attempts at being a male lover. All behind me; the surgery and so many things I can and can't imagine are ahead of me.