Another Family Reunion, Sort Of

Given the amount of time I lived in "transition," and the fact that two years have passed since my surgery, you might think that I wouldn't or shouldn't be fazed by situations like the one I'm about to face.


I've told Millie and Bruce and a couple of other people about it.  They say I'm going to be OK, and everything is going to be OK.  I know they're right:  Even if things don't go the way I hope, I don't think I can experience anything more difficult than anything else from the past few years--or, for that matter, anything that preceded them.


On Monday I'm going to see my parents again.  That's nothing new for me, of course.  I don't even feel anxious about it:  It's been a long time since anything dramatic, let alone cataclysmic, has happened between us.  I guess that has to do with the fact that we're all getting older.  I'm not sure I could shock them at this point in our lives, even if I'd wanted to.  


And, I am simply grateful for the way they've treated me.  Mom has been even more helpful and supportive than I thought she would be (and that's saying something), Dad has been even better than I thought he could be.  The good thing about that is that it allows me to be less worried than I might be about what some other people might think (assuming, of course they might think).  The bad news is that the thought that they will die.  That has been on my mind more since the last time I saw them, back in April.


So, you ask, if I'm not expecting anything new or dramatic when I see them, why am I worrying?


Well, Mike is going to be there, too.  I want to see him; he lives on the other side of the country and it's probably been about fifteen years since I've seen him.   During my first year of my transition, we were supposed to see, but just missed, each other when he came this way.  At that time, I don't think he'd even seen a photo of me as Justine, although we had talked and exchanged e-mails.  


Since then, he's seen not only those photos, but also this blog (or so I imagine), among other things.  We have talked and exchanged more e-mails; he probably has some impression of me based on those things and whatever Mom, Dad and other people have told him.  Even if all of what he's heard is wonderful, I am still a bit anxious because, really, he still doesn't fully know what to expect upon meeting me again, just as, truth be told, I don't know what to expect when I see him.  After all, since the last time I saw him, his son--who was a toddler when I last saw him--has become a young man.  So you can imagine how many other things have changed in our lives since then.  


Although my parents and I  went through periods when we didn't see much of each other, there was some continuity, at least, in my relationship with them.  Although some of the changes they saw were dramatic, and perhaps even shocking (at least in the beginning), at least they didn't miss long periods of my life.  That is in contrast to what happened with the cousin whom I met again just a few weeks after my surgery, and whom I hadn't seen since my childhood.  And, of course, what they experienced was very different from the experiences of those people who have met me since my I began my transition or those--like Millie--who didn't know me for very long as Nick.  And, I would imagine, that what my parents experienced is very different from what other people who knew me for a long time as Nick (I'm thinking of Bruce, for one.) witnessed.


Seeing Mike again, I expect, will be different from any of those experiences, and from other times I've seen him.  Then again, it might not be so different.  Either way, I'll probably be surprised.  

Arriving To The Passage Of Time

I'm at my parents' house in Florida, having gotten here last night and almost immediately dozing off.  The latter is not so much a commentary on Mom or Dad as it is on how tired I was last night.

Anyway, today I went for a nice but familiar bike ride and had an equally nice and familiar dinner of Mom's lasagna.  Tomorrow is Easter Sunday; Mom is going to Mass and later we will have dinner.  The day after that, Mom and I are planning to have lunch with a friend of hers with whom we had lunch the last time I was here, at Christmastime.

Although this is all fine, and I enjoy it, I am feeling rather strange about it all.  Yes, Mom and Dad raised and supported me.  But who was that "me?"  And all those times in my I adult life I came to their house, wherever they were living, are among the reasons I am here now.  But who was that person who spent those holidays, those weekends and those days and nights with them?  That person had a different name from the one I now have, and made all sorts of choices and decisions I would not make now.  Some of that, of course, is a matter of what nearly everyone feels upon reaching the age I am now:  Nearly all of us have done things that, knowing what we know now, we wouldn't do.  I am sure both of my parents feel this way.  But, as you can imagine, for me everything was complicated by the fact that I was living, literally, as a different person from what I am now.

I can't help but to wonder whether they would be living the lives they're living, in this house, had they raised me as a girl--had any of us known that such a thing was even possible, as foreign as it would have been in the places and time in which we were living!  I can't help but to think--even if I can't explain why or how--there are things they might've done differently if they had been raising Justine rather than Nick, and those things would have affected other choices they made.  Perhaps I would have been better off, or at least I wouldn't have to learn the things I'm learning because I would have learned them earlier in my life.  But what of my parents, and my brothers:  Would they have been better or worse off?  Or would it have made a difference?


Maybe it's just the realization that they have less and less time left in this life that's causing me to realize how much time I lost or wasted.

As This Year Passes; What Has Passed Before This Year

Tonight, after going to Millie's for a cup of tea, I talked with Marilynne's daughter, who underwent her surgery during the time I was in Trinidad. I will never forget how helpful Marilynne was to me, even though she had to do so much for her daughter!

Anyway, Marilynne's daughter and I marveled that in about two weeks, six months will have passed since our surgeries. Because she is much younger than I am, it is a more significant portion of her life than it is of mine. Still, I am struck by what similar perceptions we have of the passage of that time.

"It's gone by so quickly," she said. "But in a way, it seems like such a long time."

"I feel the same way."

"Really? I wonder why that is."

"Well," I said, "I can tell you what I think, or at least what's true for me. Yes, the time has gone by quickly. But the time before that seems like a lifetime ago, so that's why it seems as if so much time has passed since our surgeries. At least, that's what I've experienced."

"Yes! That's how it's been. I feel the way you do: that last year was a lifetime ago. And I can't compare those times to now."

I was reminded of one of Staci Lana's posts in which she said that 2009 has been her favorite year so far. I could say the same thing, but that wouldn't be quite accurate. Yes, I finally got something I'd wanted for as long as I can remember, and, as a result, felt whole for the first time in my life. In that sense, yes, this year is definitely the best of my life, so far.

But in another sense, it's not quite accurate to say that: I simply can't compare this year to any other. I think I've achieved a few smaller personal milestones and derived satisfaction from any number of moments spent with friends and working with my passions. So, all of those things, combined with having my surgery, have made this a year that has brought me more happiness than any other I can remember. But, as a result, I cannot look at any other part of my life in quite the same way.

That's not to say that I didn't have good moments or even good years before this one. But to compare this year to any previous time would be like a poet judging the work he or she did in his youth in light of what he or she is writing now. Yes, the newer work may be superior. But it's as if a different poet, which is to say a different person, is writing the new works.

In one sense, Marilynne's daughter is lucky, for she--barring some unforeseeable tragedy-- has most of her life ahead of her. I, on the other hand, have lived the greater part of my life as the "before" photo--unless, of course, I'm going to live an exceptionally long life.

Whatever our lifespans, she and I are beginning with this year.

A Bridge And A Gate At The End Of The Day

After yesterday's rain and driving wind, the cold, crisp, clear air felt good. Late this afternoon, I walked to Astoria Park, where the sunset and twilight feel as if they're made of stone, steel and the reflections in the wakes of boats plying the deceptively calm East River. That passage, between Queens, Randall's Island and Manhattan, is called Hell Gate. A number of ships ran aground there; a few actually broke up and sank.

A long, arched railroad bridge spans the river from Manhattan, through Roosevelt Island and onto the Queens side. Amtrak trains rumble over it; with its steel girders and stone embankments at each end, it's not hard to picture the steam engines that used to harrumph across it, then screech around the bend a bit beyond the park and whine as they faded into the distance. Somehow the modern Amtrak trains seem even more archaic and anachronistic than those steam engines would; they somehow accentuate the passage of time and another day passed.

As I started to walk home from there, I called my parents. They had to cancel the trip up this way they'd planned for Thanksgiving week; now they've cancelled the trip they'd planned for Christmas, which they were going to spend with my brother and his family. Neither of them, especially my mother, has been feeling well. What used to take days to heal now takes weeks or even months. On top of those ailments are new ones that come, at least in part, from aging.

Tonight, for the first time (that I can recall, anyway), I thought of my parents as old. Even when I was a kid, I didn't think of them that way. That may have to do with my being the eldest child and the fact that my parents were young (though not particularly so by the standards of their generation) when I was born. So, while neither of my parents ever tried to walk, talk or do anything else the way any of my peers or I did them, I never felt the sort of generational gap between me and them that a lot of other kids felt between them and their parents. That's not to say we didn't have (or still don't have!) disagreements. But I never felt that either of them--especially my mother--was living in a world entirely different from my own.

One irony is that now I feel this distance in age--and, more important, in what we can expect from the rest of our lives--as we have, in many ways, grown closer. Another irony is that I am in what's normally called middle age, which is the stage of life my parents were living in my early adulthood. Now that I am living what I saw them live, I understand what they're thinking and saying more than I previously could. I might even say that I empathise with them in ways I couldn't when I was younger. And now they understand me better.

I offered to go and spend Christmas with them, as I did last year. Mom reminded me that I might not find a ticket, and that if I found one, it would be extremely expensive. Besides, she said, she would rather rest. I can't say I blame her.

I just hope I get to see her and Dad soon. It's not that I have anything urgent to talk about with them. Besides, after what I've been through and what I've done, what can be so urgent--besides spending time with them? Even if they were to live another thirty years, that would matter more than anything else that I can think of.

A Tranny Theory of Relativity

Today ended in another one of those beautiful autumn sunsets, like the one I saw yesterday. The difference was that I saw it on my way to work, or more precisely, while running errands on my way to work. Then I taught my night class. They're a good group of students, but sometimes I wonder whether I'm boring or whether they're working very hard during the day: I feel, at times, as if they're going to fall asleep on me.

Hey, putting people to sleep isn't in my job description. I'm not an anaesthesiologist, you know.

I'm thinking, again, of "Jeanne Genet"s comment a few days ago. She was talking about relationships formed during intense transitions: They tend not to survive once the transition is complete, or at least has reached a plateau. (Sometimes I think of what Jean Valentine told me about writing a poem: You never finish it; you only abandon it. Sometimes I think that applies to transitions, as well as many other things in life!)

I wonder if her insight explains something else I've described in a previous post or two. I am talking about the passage of time, or at least the way I've been experiencing it. For some reason, last Spring--when I was only a few months before my surgery--seems like lifetimes, or even aeons, ago. I feel sometimes as if it's the life of someone I'd always heard of but who were elsewhere, whether in this world or another.

Perhaps I have to get to work on developing the Tranny Theory of Relativity. I knew that the surgery would be a point of demarcation: Life Before and Life After. Except that this seems to be the inverse of the physical laws I know about.

In any case, it may be that, as per Jeanne, a lot of what I had and developed as a young male or in my transition is no longer neccesary or useful and I'm moving on. Of course, what you're moving away from seems further away than that which is scarcely, if at all, visible.

Two Months: This Moment

Two months--already!

That's how long it's been since my surgery. I wonder whether time goes faster for women after they give birth. Well, if it does, it would make sense: after all, time always goes faster, or seems to, as you get older. And one's perception of time very often does change dramatically after a major event in his or her life.

The time I spend on necessary care--dilations and baths--also seems to be going more quickly. In the beginning, each of those thrice-daily fifteen-minute spells on my back with a stent in one hand and mirror in the other seemed interminable because I couldn't read or do anything else. Now they seem no more time-consuming than taking a pill.

My baths also seem to go by more quickly, even though I haven't been reading while in the tub. After dropping a couple of magazines and books--and a poem I was writing--into the water, I've given up on that.

When I focus on the task at hand, I am living in the moment. That makes enough sense for a blonde like me. I have had to learn to live in the moment in order not to live for it. Bruce has said that this is more or less a basic principle of Zen practice. Sounds good up to this point.

Now I'm learning that distracting myself was actually making the time move more slowly when I was doing the things I had to do. Even counting sheep, minutes or seconds--dull as it is--is as much a distraction as watching Saturday Night Fever was for young people of my generation. I guess the reason why such diversions drag time almost to a screeching halt is that we distract ourselves precisely because we are trying to pass time. And how can you try to pass time if you're not thinking about how slowly it's moving toward whatever it is you're waiting for?

Maybe that's, paradoxically enough, the reason why the past week went by so quickly. I had returned to work and, really, I couldn't think about--much less do--much else. There was only going to the college, teaching, taking care of business and reuniting with colleagues and former students and meeting new ones. I didn't have the energy for anything else, so at the end of the day, I was very tired. But because I couldn't watch TV, I read or did something related to my job, or went to bed (after dilating and taking a bath) when I got home.

Now, of course I don't want to do nothing but work and sleep. However, I must say that it was very gratifying to be completely present for myself, not to mention my students and my co-workers, while I was there. There was always just the present moment; it was all I had to attend to, but I could not remain in it.

Nor can I, or must I, remain in this day, as pleasant as it has been. It's Labor Day, which is often seen as the unofficial end of summer. (Someone, I don't remember whom, said that this wasn't the last weekend of summer; it was just the last weekend you had to pay to use the beach.) As the weather was rather cool and clear until just before sunset, a part of me didn't want it to end. And I am happy about having done my longest walk, and therefore my most prolonged exercise, since my surgery: three and a half hours in total, with a half-hour break when I sat on one of the benches that line the promenade along Hell Gate. After all that I ate yesterday at Millie's and John's barbecue, I needed it!

If this is indeed the end of summer, at least I know that it, too, has gone by more quickly than I'd anticipated. I thought that a summer of no cycling or swimming would simply drag on. Instead, because I have had to focus on what I've needed to do--and because the sacrifices I made this summer are helping me to begin to live the life I've always wanted--it seems to have passed in the blink of an eye.

Tomorrow I will be back at work. Somehow I think it will go quickly, as will the next month.