Early Spring Morning

Today I rode to work in vibrant but not overly bright sunlight and a light but very cool breeze.  It's the sort of day on which you can practically feel every pore and orifice of your body opening;  wounds in cold rain are not even memories:  they almost seem not to have happened. 


For some reason, an early spring morning like the one we had today brings me back to very specific moments in my childhood.  Somehow I remember some Easter Sunday as being like today was--one from a time when I may not have even known what was being celebrated on the holiday.  I have, thankfully, a few memories filled with that kind of light.  For a long time I had forgotten that I had ever experienced it; for another long period of time, I denied it because somehow the memory of that light was even more painful than the hurtful things I experienced.  


When I first started my transition, and in my very first days of living full-time as Justine, I found myself going back to those times, and to that light that became them, very often.  Rob, my social worker and a female-to-male, said that it was probably because my gender identity was less of an issue than it would later become.  I recall knowing that I am female--a girl--but it somehow didn't affect my life, or anyone else's, in the way it later would.  


At that age, my world was my parents, grandparents, a few other relatives and a girl who, as I recall, was the daughter of one of my mother's friends whom I'll call Lola. I always liked playing with her; the grown-ups probably thought it was cute that I had a "girlfriend."  I believe that I knew--of course, in a way that I couldn't articulate then--that my mother and grandmother somehow knew otherwise.  Or, at least they didn't mind my playing with Lola if it made me happy and I wasn't causing any trouble.

Then, it seemed, that bright, cool sky had enough room for everybody--including anyone I was, am or could be. 


I haven't seen Lola since I was about five or six years old.  She is one of the few people from my past whom I'd actually like to meet again.  There are a few others about whom I'd like to know where they are and what they're doing now, but whom I have little or no desire to see again.  But I'd like to meet Lola, even though we probably wouldn't recognize each other at first, if at all.


What would she remember from her childhood?  


At least I have a memory that could be echoed in a morning like the one I expereinced today when I was pedalling to work.  There weren't the echoes of thunder muttering through my sleep; there was just the sun and cool wind.  Those things can sustain my through a ride; sometimes they're enough to get me through a day, or a lot more.