Synchronicity?

Another gray, cold day, except that we're getting some snow. It's colder than it's been, so I don't think the snow will turn to rain, or even sleet, any time soon.

Most people would rather be touched by snow than struck by sleet. I feel that way, too. But either way, it's cold.

Maybe the estrogen and my age are changing my body chemistry. I never used to feel, or at least notice, the cold as much as I do now. At least, I didn't admit that I did. I suppose I could blame my body chemistry for that, too, except that back then I was full of testosterone (and sometimes substances my body didn't produce!). Oh, no, I'm not cold, and I know where I'm going. Of course!

But back to the weather: It really seems like a B-movie come true. I mean, how many scenes depict hard times against a backdrop of winter weather. I guess they're the negatives, if you will, of all those paintings and lithographs that depict prosperity and the glories of an empire unfolding under clear Hapsburg skies. Of course, as the skies grayed, empires and fortunes waned.

So I guess it's supposed to be cold and gray, what with the economic times. I may have already mentioned all of those Depression-era photographs in which everything always looks overcast. And, of course, as the skies darken, it means that the nation is going to war.

I hope that's not the case. I'm against war in general, but I can think of very few military actions that rival this country's invasion of Iraq for the sheer mendacity that led up to it. Bush lied, they died: It may not be the greatest rhyme, but it sums up the situation.

And the pretext for it was something that wasn't in the script, unless it had been written by Albert Camus and based on The Plague. I am talking, of course, about September 11th, a day when le mort en pleurait du ciel claire: Death rained from the clear blue sky. You could live all of your life in New York and never see a morning as clear as that one was, before the planes crashed into the towers. I was reminded of yet another literary work:

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumpets
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

That's part of "A Song On The End of The World" by Czeslaw Milsoz. (Did I spell his name right? Everyone I know pronounces it to rhyme with "cole slaw-meat loaf.") No one believed what was happening on September 11th; it just didn't fit with the cloudless sky and the sort of warmth that either radiates from the last flickerings of summer or hides the fact that autumn is about to begin, depending on your point of view.

And now it's cold and snowing and the world's going to hell in a handbasket, at least according to the pundits. I hope that all the things I'm looking forward to aren't swept away by these winds or buried in the snow (or worse yet, dissipated when the snow melts.).

Sometimes synchronicity is a good, or even logical, thing. Only sometimes.

Males and Females in Hibernation

I'm so tired. Today reminds me of a lot of days I had during the regular semester: Too much to do, not enough sleep. In between the comprehensive exam workshop and the class I taught, I went to my office with the intention of doing some work. Instead, I nodded off.

I started to think about my cats: even though it was relatively warm inside my apartment, they could feel how cold it was outside. At least, that's what I sense. So, they are curling up on anything and anybody that has even the slightest ability to be cuddled. That would include me.

And I'm feeling rather hibernatory (Does that word exist?) myself. Cold and gray for days on end does that to some people. Actually, lots of people. As if I were ever concerned with joining a majority!

Anyway, I had another one of those days in which it seemed that every woman I saw was younger and prettier than I am. Of course, those aren't the things that make one a woman, but I find myself wondering whether I'll be attractive and sexy (as if I ever was) after the operation. I know women are judged much more on their looks than men are, but I also want to be the kind of woman that only I can be. Well, at least I hope I'm sui generis. But I still want to "fit in" as a woman.

I'm still thinking about what my brother Mike said last week: I'm not effeminiate. Of course, I should take that with bays full of salt: After all, he said "every transsexual I've seen is effeminate." Now, I know he lives in California. But he's also in the San Bernadino area, which is where lots of LA cops live. So, I have to wonder just how many transgenders he's actually seen. And, of course, I think of what Richard Russo said in his afterword to Jenny Boylan's She's Not There: That he still slipped into using masculine pronouns when talking with Jenny, who, as Jim, befriended him many years earlier. And, Russo said, there were still times when he had trouble seeing Jenny as a woman, even though she "passed" practically from the first time she went out in women's clothes and has morphed into a beautiful woman. On the other hand, Jenny's roommate at the sex-change hospital was much more masculine-, or at least androgynous-, looking, but Russo could never see her as anything but a woman and used female pronouns when addressing and talking about her.

I know all this, and the fact that I haven't actually seen Mike in person in about fifteen years and, for all I know, I may never see him again. Still, his words are echoing in my head, no matter what I do to purge them.

I guess they affect me for the same reason my brother Tony's ending all communication with me, and between me and my niece and nephew, hurts: Nobody can hurt you like your flesh and blood. A cliche, but like most cliches, it attained its status because it's so true and nobody does anything about it. Then again, what can you do about it?

Now I have a question: Do female bears hibernate in the same way as male ones?

Another Winter Night

Tonight I rode my bike to and from work. It was the first time I'd done that in, probably, a month. And it's the first time I've been on my bike since I got back from Florida. Time was when I'd've ridden every day. But, well, I guess I've slowed down and I'm not trying to prove anything. Still, sometimes I miss those days when I was riding everyday, and to practically everywhere. Part of that sentimentality is, of course, a longing for youth, or at least being younger. And I think of the kind of shape I was in, at least physically. Emotionally, spiritually--that's another story.

Anyway, I didn't count on the temperature dropping about fifteen degrees by the time I left the college. At least, that's what it felt like. And I was wearing a skirt that came to just above my knee when I stood, or to the lower-middle part of my thighs when I was in the saddle. I covered my legs in pantyhose. Surprisingly, I didn't feel the cold much below my waist.

Then again, whenever I've ridden my bike in winter, my legs rarely felt cold as long as my head and torso were warm enough.

I must have been quite the sight on my bike. A female driver actually was looking at my legs, then at me, at a stoplight. She was grinning.

And now I am dozing off. The cold really saps your energy--especially if you're female, whether by birth or with those little yellow Premarin pills.

Six Months: Deja Vu, A Venir

Today's the day. Well, the halfway day, anyway.

Six months...since I started counting down this year. Six months--181 days--until the date of my surgery.

Yes, only six months to go. When's the day gonna come?

For the last few weeks, I've had the sense that this would be a major milestone. I wasn't sure of whether I'd plow full-speed-ahead, or whether I'd start to panic. You might say I'm doing a bit of both.

Actually, this day has been neither as exhiliarating nor as foreboding as I might've expected it to be. About the biggest event of this day was resuming my electrolysis after a layoff of three weeks. Tonight, I had another class session with the students I'll be teaching for the next two weeks. They're very nice, and I haven't told them anything about my impending surgery, this blog or my life as the "before" picture. However, I'm sure they've heard something about them, for most of my students these days are friends of students who've taken my classes before.

Tonight they were very energetic, asking lots of questions and adding a lot to the discussion and doing really good work. And I felt hyper and giddy. Were they feeding off my energy, or was I running on theirs? Or was it some sort of spontaneous synchronicity? What in the world did I just ask?

Anyway, I enjoyed it and will continue to do so, or so I hope. Maybe if the next six months could be like this, I would be in really good condition, both physically and emotionally, when I go into the surgery. Or I may just be so exhausted that I'll collapse onto the operating table and Dr. Bowers can give her anaesthesiologist the day off. Does that mean I would get a discount on the cost of the surgery? Anaesthesiologist sent home, not paid...Hmm, How would the anaesthesiologists' union feel about that? Or do they have one?

But back to this day, and the six months gone and six months to come. At the beginning, I wanted this to be an uneventful and uncomplicated year. Somehow I had the idea that I needed to save my energy, to save myself, for the surgery. That was one of the reasons why, just after I started this full-time faculty position, I was upset: I started to feel as if whatever right to privacy I had was taken away from me. But then again, practically everyone on campus knew about me, or had at least heard about me and thought "that's the one" when they saw me walking down the halls.

Or maybe they said, "She's that prof," or "He's that prof." If they said either of those things, I shouldn't be happy. After all, I am an English teacher and I'd hope they'd know that any living thing, whatever his or her gender, should never be referred to as "that." Not even if he or she is an ex or an in-law!

I must say, though, that the more imminent the surgery becomes, the more I sense my in-between-ness. (I'm sorry for the inelegance of that locution.) Previously, I was seeing myself if, not as a corporeal woman, then at least as someone who was living more or less as one. In public, strangers who've heard nothing about me call me "ma'am" or, if I'm being a really good girl, "miss." There was the other side, too: People who assumed I was less knowledgable or competent than I actually am. I've found them in the halls of academia as well as in hardware stores. And then, of course, there have been the dangers: I don't venture as freely, solitarily or as late as night as I once did. I'd been warned not to do those things, and I think now of the guy who tried to pull of my skirt, whom I tried to lose in a maze of ancient streets just behind the Hotel de Ville in Paris. I know those streets better than most non-Parisians, but he knew them at least as well. Finally, I leapt into a taxi and blurted "Republique" to the driver. I know the arrondisements around la Place de la Republique pretty well, he wouldn't be there, and from there I knew I could get on the Metro to Janine's apartment.

That was near the end of my first year of living full-time as Justine. A couple of more incidents with randy, raunchy guys followed during the ensuing years.

Most women in similar situations would be thinking about a sexual assault. I thought of that, too, and of other kinds of assault (which usually accompany the sexual kind). But biological women in those situations are in danger, or are at least concerned because of their woman-ness. On the other hand, I was in danger because I was, in some senses, not yet completely a woman.

Of course the operation won't take that danger away. But I'm doing it so that at least I will come closer to being the person, the woman, I am and want to be.

So, if I've been living between genders, or as one who entered her ancestral home-gender (Sorry for another clumsy phrasing!) but who wasn't yet fluent in the language or entangled with the culture, there are still aspects of living fully (or as fully as I can) as a woman that I can only imagine. And aspects I can't imagine.

And there are the things I've always imagined. Will they be as I envisioned them? Among other things, I'm thinking, of course, about my body without a penis, and with a vagina and clitoris. Will I see it the same way as I see other things I've always imagined, like my breasts (such as they are)? I'd always wanted them, although I'm now glad they're not as big as I would've wanted them when I was younger. The truth is, I see them when I dress and undress, but I don't think about them. They're just kinda there: I like them, but they're nothing to make a fuss over. Then again, they don't have as great an effect on how I function as a woman as I expect my vagina and clitoris will.

Now I'm thinking again of that first year of living full-time. I was teaching at LaGuardia Community College. The school's drama society and women's center were staging Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. (See what happens when one of your school's faculty members "changes" genders!) A few of the actresses, women from the center and I were talking about it. Then they began to talk about their vaginas and what they meant to them. Finally, they all looked to me. "Mine's within me," I said. "Hopefully, one day it will be on the outside, too."

"It will," said the Center's director.

Yes...As long as all goes according to plan and design, it will. In another six months.

Deja vu; a venir. Another 181 days to go.

Time flies. Are we there yet?

Body and Spirit

Last night, after I wrote my entry in this blog, I went to Oprah's website. Yes, that Oprah: which other one could I mean?

Anyway, I clicked onto the link for people who want to be on her show. There, I found a bunch of categories. I couldn't fit my request in any one of them, but I chose the one about spirituality and self-realization, or something like that. On it, I wrote--in the little box provided--my story, or at least what I could fit in there.

It made me think of Monty Python's "Summarize Proust" sketch. Not that I'm as interesting as Proust. But how can someone's, whether one's own or someone else's, life or work be pigeonholed into 2000 characters?

All I could do was say, in a very rudimentary way, that my journey from living as Nick to life as Justine has been a spiritual one, and that I took it entirely for spiritual reasons. It's part of an even larger journey, which includes my sobriety as well as whatever else has contributed to my evolution, such as it is.

Will Oprah's agents call me? I'm not betting on it. Then again, I'm almost never a bettor anyway. All I've ever done is what I needed to do--at least when I put down the bottle, pills and powder, and when I "changed" genders--and hoped, but didn't assume, that everything would turn out all right. It occurs to me that betting and spirituality are mutually exclusive, and that as little as I can understand faith, I know that it's not a bet; it's a matter of beliefs.

So, what was the nice spiritual trannie girl thinking about today? How ugly she is; how every woman she saw today on the train or elsewhere looked like Angelina Jolie next to her; how she'll never make a good woman with a body like the one she has.

I am practicing a more feminine, or at least a more alluring, walk. Soon I'll start the voice lessons. Hopefully the walk and the talk will become natural for me. The latter would probably be helped if I were to lose about thirty pounds or so.

In case one of Oprah's agents is reading this (:-) ), I want to emphasize that I really have been making my transition, and have scheduled my surgery, for spiritual reasons. I simply want my body to more closely conform to what my spirit, my essence is and wants to express. Sometimes I tell people that I feel like the handicapped kids for whom I conducted poetry workshops at St. Mary's Hospital in Queens: Sometimes their spirits soar, leap, run, jump or dance even if their bodies can't. If there were a medicine or operation that would allow their bodies to express what was inside them, who wouldn't want them to have it? Well, I am luckier than they were: such things exist for me.

Still, I wouldn't mind having Jennifer Lopez's curves, Rihanna's legs, Halle Berry's facial bone structure, Kirstie Alley's eyes or just about anything from Angelina Jolie. I mean, really, I want them for spiritual reasons. Honestly, I do!

I know, Marcie Bowers doesn't do that kind of surgery. She's going to do my gender reassignment, but she doesn't do cosmetic surgeries. And, from my conversation and what I've seen of her, I don't think she's apt to recommend it to all trans women. This may sound strange to say about a surgeon, but I get the impression that she's more concerned with the spiritual than the corporeal: The work she does on other trans people's bodies, and will do on mine, is for the purpose of helping people's bodies to become vehicles for their spirits. She has said things to that effect, and speaks of her work in almost religious tones.

Know what? I wouldn't mind looking like her, either. Dr. Bowers, can you make me as pretty as you are?

I've made that request of one other woman in my life. The funny thing was, I hadn't yet begun to take hormones, grown my hair or do anything more than "cross dress" up to that day. And I was grungy and sweaty from bike riding that hot day when I asked Toni to help me. For the next five years, she would cut and color my hair and help me to select skin and hair care products as well as cosmetics. Then she went to Paris to study theatrical makeup, and is now starting to work in that area. One of her fellow hairdressers in that shop--Anna, in Zoe's Beauty in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY--now cuts my hair.

Neither of them made me as atttractive as they are. Then again, I do get a lot of compliments on my hair, at least when I brush it. In my spirit, I always had long, flowing hair. So I guess they've helped me to become my real self, in their own way.

Who says you can't be beautiful and spiritual at the same time?

In-Between

I'm somewhere between having a cold and the flu. Except that I'm not supposed to get the flu: I got the shot. I let my doctor talk me into it, although I'm not convinced of their efficacy. Oh well. Maybe my sinuses will turn into a toxic waste site, and researchers will learn about...something or another related to the environment and public health. Maybe not.

So I'm feeling rather tired and not particularly peppy or sexy. But today I've had men--all kinds--looking my way and smiling at me. On the subway, three different men said "Happy New Year" in cooing, even seductive voices. Were they playing with me? Or...what were they doing?

And then, during the class I taught tonight, I mentioned that I didn't even touch a computer until I was 41 years old. After class, a student stayed to ask me a question. After I answered it, she exclaimed, "I was surprised that you said you didn't use a computer until you were 41."

"Well, if you saw me using a computer..."

"I wasn't thinking about that. What surprised me is when you said, 'when I was 41.' I didn't even think you were that old."

"Really. Oh, thank you!"

"I thought you were in your mid-30's or so."

"Oh...Thaank you! You get an 'A'"

We both giggled. I think it forestalled a little bit of aging for both of us.

I haven't taken any meds--just my hormones. So the experience I described wasn't a hallucination. Last night, I told Mike that's how my time in Florida felt. It was raining and sleeting when I got on the plane, warm and sunny when I got off. When I boarded the plane to come home, it was cool and breezy, but not unpleasant: rather like an early May day in New York. But when the plane landed in Newark, the temperature was 20 F, and the 30-MPH winds whipped snow about.

Now, one thing is seeming less and less like an illusion. I'm talking about my impending surgery, of course. Celeste, another faculty member, asked about it. "Counting days?," she wondered. "All 183 of them," I nodded.

"Nervous about it?"

"I'm starting to feel that way. It seems more real, less of an abstraction. Yet, in some ways, it's harder to imagine what will follow."

"Interesting."

"It's as if my feelings have reversed: A few months ago, I could fairly easily imagine life after the surgery, but the prospect of the surgery didn't seem quite real."

These feelings seem to have something to do with another phenomenon: Now, when people say, "You're going to be a real woman" (or simply a woman), I don't correct them. I have always felt that I'm a woman, whether or not my body expressed it. And I told myself that the surgery, whenever I had it, wouldn't "make" me a woman (save in the eyes of the law); rather, it would be an affirmation of the most basic fact of my being. Deep down, I feel that way. So why don't I argue with those people who say that I'm going to "become" a woman?

I guess you could say that I have been a woman in exile, if you will: in the foreign country of a male body. So you might also say that in undergoing the operation, I am coming home. Another woman I know said as much. When you're going home at the end of a day's work, you more or less know what you're going home to. But when you've been away for a long time, or if it's a home where you've never been before (sort of like Jacobo Timerman's Israel), you're going back to a memory or other image of it. When you're on your way to a home you haven't been away from for very long, you're in-between only as long as you're in transit. But when you're going to a home of memory--whether recent and corporeal, or a kind of karmic deja vu--you're between the reality of being home and your memory or imagining of it until you live in that home, and the life it allows and proscribes, by its terms if on your terms.

I guess sometimes in-between is where you need to be, at least for the moment.

Cats, Motherhood and Birth

Charlie and Max have been all over me. No, you needn't be worried or jealous, Dominick. You know who Charlie and Max are: my two cats.

Ever since I've come back from Florida, it seems that they can't get enough of me. You'd think I'd been away for months or years instead of days. Any time I sit down, one or both of them is on me. In fact, late this afternoon, when I was talking with Dominick on the phone, Max wedged himself between my left side and the arm of the chair in which I was sitting. And Charlie somehow managed go climb onto me and the chair, and to prop his head on Max's back as they both dozed off.

Needless to say, they were beyond adorably cute. I wouldn't mind taking them to work with me. Now that I think of it, I'd love to have them nearby when I'm in the hospital. But I guess that if they've been this happy to see me after I was gone for only a week, they'll be even more joyous after I return from my surgery and recovery.

Caring for them, and for the cats I had before them, is probably the closest I'll come to motherhood. Mom has said that my cats are my children. Sometimes I feel that way, but I didn't bring Max or Charlie into this world. (Nor could I have done so!) Mom, on the other hand, gave birth to Mike, Tony and Vin as well as me. Two women have told me that because I'm not capable of even producing one offspring, I'm not, and never will be, completely a woman. One--a now-former friend (though for other reasons altogether)--also said that because I've never had a period, I'll be nothing but a male with female genitalia.

Sometimes I think defining "male" and "female" are even more tricky than defining the moment at which a sperm and egg become a life. I'll convene a panel of experts, including Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh to help me answer those questions.

Just messin' with ya', Dear Reader. Sarah Palin may be a perfectly good mother, for all I know. But will I let her define me, or anyone else? Not unless I get to look like her!

I wonder whether she has cats. Somehow I think not. There is one reason why I'd never say that caring for Charlie and Max is equivalent to parenting: Either one of them is much, much easier to feed and keep in line (to the extent that I do that) than just about any kid (or adult, for that matter) you'll ever meet. It's almost too easy to love my felines.

Several people--none of whom are followers of anything that might be called "new age"--have said that I'm giving birth to my self. One went as far as to say that many people never do such a thing. That sounds about right. I also think that almost anyone who gives birth to him or her self does so out of necessity. No one plans on it; there's nothing to prepare anyone for such an undertaking. Sometimes it's a matter of desperation: to save one's life. Hmm...Giving birth to one life to save one's own. Gotta chew on that one.

A great example of what I've said about giving birth to one's self is Nora in A Doll's House. Now I'm thinking back to when I first saw and read the play, when I was a teenager. At that time, I'd never heard anyone talk about giving birth to one's self, and I was so far in the closet that I found myself in some really strange combinations of clothing. (I was going to the local public library to read Christine Jorgensen's autobiography: I wouldn't have dared to check it out.) Still, I remember thinking, even then, that Nora had given birth to someone new: a woman not under the bonds of her father, husband or some other man. Of course, what I didn't realize was that whomever she became wasn't new or seperate from her: She was always within her, just as Justine was within me (even though, at times, I'd lost sight of, or hope for, her) all through those decades as Nick.

How will Charlie and Max react to the "newborn?" And how good of a mother will I be. Dominick says I would make a fantastic mother. I hope he's right.

Another Shift

I haven't checked my weight since the middle of November. I'm afraid to. Some people say weight and age are just numbers. Well, let's see whether they believe that when they reach my numbers.

Have I gained weight since then? I don't know. I do know this, however: My body is changing shape, again. After I was on hormones for a few months, I noticed that my men's clothes, and even some of the women's clothes I had at the time, didn't fit anymore. My previously-flat chest started to develop two mounds. They'll never rival Pamela Anderson's, nor do I want them to. But they were enough so that I couldn't button my old shirts or jackets. And my rear end, while still proportionately smaller than most women's, had clearly grown larger, at least proportionally. This meant that any pants that fit around my rear end were much too big for my waist, and anything that fit my waist (the way men's pants are fitted, along with the inseam length), I couldn't get around my rear without stretching or tearing it. So, it was a good thing that I was happy to wear skirts just about every day, and that I like A-lines as well as other flared styles.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that some under and outer pants didn't fit anymore. If I pulled them to my waist--or, at least, what had been my waist for the past few years--they slid off. So now I have to buy lower-cut underpants and lower-rising pants. And the undepants have to be a size smaller than the ones I've used.

The doctors--and other transgenders--told me about the "fat migration" I seem to have experienced. But no-one said there would be two rounds of it. Not that I'm complaining. It's just was unexpected. Then again, I guess everything shifts sooner or later,doesn't it?

The Cold, Again

I really got spoiled by the warm weather in Florida: I don't think I've been warm since I got off the plane the other day!

Funny, how I used to like the cold weather so much. Or, at least it didn't bother me. I take that back: I felt superior to people who complained about the cold. They were such sissies, I used to tell myself. You know: Cold is a reflection of the depth of my soul, and all that.

Now I'm wondering where my newfound appreciation of warmth and sunshine, and the translucent blues of the Florida sea and sky, come from. Could it be that I'm really developing in some way I'd never anticipated? Or is it that I'm growing older?

Or maybe it's just the hormones. (Lately, ads for Jameson's Irish whiskey have claimed, "It could just be the taste.") Maybe just the hormones. No big deal, right?

As the doctor prescribed them, he described some of the effects they could have on me. "They could make you more emotional." Check. "You will also experience crying jags and giddiness." Mmm-hmm. "Tiredness, possibly." Definitely, sometimes. "And your the hair on your head will grow and fluff out. So far, so good.

He didn't mention anything about feeling cold. One thing I noticed, long before I started in my transition, is that in a room, if any people are complaining about the cold, it's usually the women. And. most of the time, it's the men who find the room too hot.

I used to be one of those men. Most homes and offices seemed overheated to me; I could go outside in shorts and a T-shirt when other people shivered inside their down parkas. I can't even begin to count how many times I heard, "Aren't you cold?" If I was feeling particularly ornery, I'd advise the person who aksed to curl up in foetal position and to place his or her head in some place where it wasn't meant to be.

But now I'm one of those cold chicks. And, well, you know how much guys like that! ;-)

Blame it on the hormones!

Starting Off Well-Rested

Well-rested. I guess that's a good way to start a New Year. That was the first thing Millie, John and Stephanie noticed about me today. Yes, I got to live a stress-free week, and I guess they noticed ite effects.

The rest will do me lots of good. Tomorrow, Friday, is a day off for lots of people. But it's not for me: at least, not completely. I start teaching a winter-session class, which will meet in the evenings for the next three weeks.

Starting a new class while well-rested is a good thing. And I know lots of other things will start with this year, or soon after its beginning, this beginning. I mean, the coming semester at the college will be different from the one that ended last week. And what follows will certainly be different from that.

In fact, I expect that the next few months will be very different from any other time I've lived, though I'm not exactly sure of what will change, or how that will come to pass. Then again, if I knew, it wouldn't be change, would it?

A little while ago I was talking with Mike, my brother in California. He said that people around me--including Mom, possibly, and Dad for certain--are bound to change their feelings about me, my surgery and its possible consequences as the date for it draws nearer. I had been thinking about something like that on my way home yesterday: That Mom and Dad's relative calm, and their benigness toward me, could turn into something different over the next few months. What it could become, I don't quite know yet.

From the moment I started this transition, I understood that I could not realistically expect anyone's blessing for what I wanted to do. All I could do is hope, really, that at least family members, friends and colleagues would accept, if not me or the person I would become, at least the fact that I was going, and needed, to do what I've been doing. So far, that seems to have happened, maybe to a greater degree than I'd hoped. A corollary to that realization has been that in some situations, like work, allies are more important than friends. I have always known that it would be utterly unrealistic to expect that anyone would be thrilled that someone he or she has known for years or decades is changing the most fundamental aspect of the way he or she has identified that person.

I don't know whether Mike has thought about the same things I've just mentioned, simply because he hasn't needed to. But in light of those realizations, what he said makes sense.

So lots will happen in the coming year. Good thing I'm well-rested: at least for now, anyway.

Something I'm Not Counting Down

So...My last year before my surgery is about to end. Is that a milestone? Someone once told me that any day is a milestone if you make it so.

Other people are "counting down" the final hours, minutes or seconds of this year. I have never done that, and I have observed the end of the New Year to the extent that those around me were celebrating. Some years I went to dinners or parties. A few times I went to concerts or other events. I can also recall at least a couple of other New Year's Eves in bed with someone or another. OK, Dear Reader: Did I satisfy your appetite for scandal? :-)

And this one...Well, I'm going to get some rest. Yeah, I know the past week has been restful. But the trip home undid at least a little bit of that serenity. The flight left more than two and a half hours later than was scheduled and landed in winds that whipped snow around the windows and wings as we landed in Newark Airport. Then the bus from the Airport to the Port Authority Bus Terminal ran slowly because it had to: See the previous weather report. On top of that, because we were going into the city late in the afternoon, the bus had to stop and start down the spiral that connects the New Jersey Turnpike to the Lincoln Tunnel, through which we barely moved at all, or so it seemed. At least a subway train came practically the moment I walked down the stairs to the platform.

And, when I got off the plane, I wore the jacket I'd packed over the one I was wearing on the plane. But I didn't have gloves or a scarf, so the wind seemed to go straight to the bone. I had the opposite problem I had on arriving in Florida: That day, on which the temperature was near freezing, I wore a courduroy skirt with black pantyhose and a knitted crew-neck sweater and cardigan, with a jacket over it. That was fine when I left for the airport, but thermically as well as aesthetically out of place when I stepped off the plane to 75-degree sunshine in Florida.

This night's weather-- about 15 degrees F and 30-mph winds--is the sort of thing that entices other creatures into hibernation. And I'm feeling that way, too. And so is Millie: She said her daughter was coming in, but she wasn't having a party. She kept her invitation open, but added that she's having a nice lunch tomorrow. I'm taking her up on that and will sleep tonight. Maybe I'll be up when the revelers in Times Square count off the seconds to midnight, but I won't make a point of staying up.

I'm already counting down to another milestone: 188 days to the surgery. I don't want to do any other countdowns, either now or after the surgery. Oh, I'd like to have things to look forward to after the "big day," and suspect that I will. But I'm worse than any kid waiting for Christmas or the last day of school. It's so unseemly, so unladylike, ya know? ;-)

With no apologies to T.S. Eliot, I'm not ending with a bang or a whimper. Rather, I'm starting something new, tonight and on the 7th of July. And, hopefully, other things as well.

Three Girls On An Excellent Adventure

The weather has been so warm since I've arrived here that today seemed chilly. Still, it was about as warm--albeit a bit breezier--than a mid-May day in New York. And the sky was so clear and blue that it was all but impossible to imagine it as a foreboding to something, or the eye of a storm.

In other words, it was another great day for bike riding, even if I didn't do as long a trip as I did yesterday or on Saturday.

Today's trek took me to a place I'd visited the first time I came to Florida to see Mom and Dad. That was fifteen years ago, and what can I say but that I've changed a bit since then?

I rode down a stretch of State Route 100--not my favorite cycling road--to a sign that read "Bulow Plantation Ruins and an arrow pointing toward it." Then I followed a two-lane road that had a shoulder for about the first quarter-mile until I saw another sign for the Bulow campground. Three miles away, it said. And that was the last sign I saw until I saw something for a Bulow development. I guess someone was trying to come as close as possible to creating a Bulow theme park without actually making one.

Then, after the development and the campground I saw a wooden sign--the kind one expects to see for a state park or a Boy Scout (been one!) camp--for the Bulow plantation ruins. There, I followed a dirt road that make the bike I was riding feel like a jackhammer for about a quarter mile. It led to a parking lot at the entrance for the plantation ruins and the beginning of a nature trail.

There, I noticed a car with Quebec license plates pulling in. "Bonjour. Comment ca-va?," I said to a stocky, balding man. He introduced himself as "Willie" and his wife. "Elle ne me sembla pas un quebecoise ou francaise." He chuckled, "Oui, chinoise." "Comment s'appele?"

"My name is Sinh. I speak more English than French."

And we spent a few minutes trying to figure out whether the place was closed. There was no sign indicating that, but there was a gate pulled across the path to the ruins. After a few moments, two boys lifted their bicycles, then climbed, over it. They said they'd come in from the opposite end of the park, and rode through. But they didn't see any ruins, they said. Willie and Sinh decided that they didn't want to try to chance it. "Peut etre quelques metres, peut etre dix kilometres," Willie mused. "Dix kilometres, a pied, ca sera tout la journee."

I agreed with him, and after we said "au revoir," they drove away. I pulled two plums from my bag and was about to bite into one when another car with pulled in. The driver waved to me; I said hello. Then her passenger asked, "What's here?" I described, as I remembered, the ruins of the plantation and sugar mill that stood somewhere on the site, next to a lagoon. They asked about the gate. I replied that I thought it was open, and I saw two boys climb it.

So they parked, disembarked and started walking toward the fence. The younger, more petite woman started to climb the fence. "I'd try it if I were twenty," I demurred. They laughed knowingly. Then, after she stepped off on the other side, her partner, who was taller and even stockier than I ever was, started to climb.

You might say that the spirit of adventure can be infectuous, or that, at least, I can be swept up in it. Soon enough, I climbed, too, and so two young female lovers and a middle-aged tranny woman they found along the way were off on an excellent adventure. (I know, that last phrase sounds sooo 1990!)

We went to the lagoon, where visitors can rent canoes. The younger one, named Ciera, said, "Hey, if we took one of those canoes, what could happen?" I shrugged my shoulders; Anita, her partner, talked us out of it, as if we really were going to take off in one of those boats (which were probably bolted to something). So we wandered around the place, finding something that looked the way one of Monet's lily ponds might've looked had it been in Florida instead of France, and, next to it, the sign that pointed to the ruins, which were a quarter-mile away.

Along the way, we shared stories and other details of our lives in ways that we normally wouldn't with strangers. They live in Orlando; Anita grew up in Miami but was born in Chile. Her family came to the US after Pinochet came into power. I explained that her story parallels that of my ex, who was born in Cuba and whose family fled to Miami when she was five years old and Castro took over the country. And Ciera has been in Florida all of her life, she said.

Most people would take her for a straight, or possibly bisexual, woman; while Anita is, at least in appearance, the "butch" in that relationship. However, they explained that in some ways, they reverse roles. Anita usually cooks and does other domestic tasks for them, while Ciera likes more masculine pursuits. "What difference does it make?," Anita wondered. "All that stuff about gender roles is silly," she added.

Oh, girl. (No sexism here!) Now we're in dangerous territory. And what hazard did she court? That I would get on one of my soapboxes. Which I did: "Well, you know, we have the luxury--and necessity--of rethinking gender roles. It's not all about procreation or the survival of the species anymore."

Then we got even deeper into the sort of territory into which people don't usually venture with people they met only half an hour earlier. Anita is a butch who still wants to be a woman, which is exactly the reason why she could understand why I wanted the operation. And she is Ciera's first girlfriend, which is the reason why Ciera could understand my sexual history.

We parted with two of the heartiest hugs I've ever received from strangers. And they said, in unison, "You're a really good hugger."

"It's one of life's pleasures."

And Anita gave me her card and I gave my promise that I would contact her and Ciera. I'll also give them the link to this blog. I wonder what they'll think.

Just think: After that, I got to spend more time with Mom and Dad. Tomorrow I'm going home, to spend New Year's Eve with Millie, the best friend I've made since starting my new life, and her family--and Dominick.

Am I blessed, or what?

Just As Long As They All Know I'm a Woman

Another warm, sunny day during which I rode along the ocean. About the only thing that could've been better was if I were riding one of my own bikes instead of the clunker Dad borrowed from a neighbor.

I never, ever thought I'd be tempted to move to Florida. Somehow I couldn't imagine life without the changing seasons or the hustle and bustle of New York. And, I have also assumed that as a transgender woman, I wouldn't be able to live anywhere else, save perhaps for San Francisco or a couple of cities in Europe.

But I find that everyone has been treating me as if I were a middle-aged (or even younger!) woman. Today I stopped in another Kangaroo store: this one in Flagler Beach, across Route A1A from the dunes. A very nice young black man worked behind the counter; another black man about his age was making deliveries. They were bantering, hamming it up to the music on the radio and even dancing. I was loving every second of it: They seemed so spontaneous yet passionate at the same time.

When I walked up to the counter with a small carton of juice and a packet of pralines, the nice young man stopped his shuffle and said, "Oh, I'm sorry ma'am."

"You've done nothing wrong."

"Ma'am, we get like this. We just like to have fun, ma'am."

"Why not? We only go around once; we may as well enjoy it."

"That's true, ma'am. And, look at you ma'am. You're smiling."

"Thank you for making that possible."

"See, Ma'am, I want to make this a happy store, ma'am. They're not like this over at Seven-Eleven."

"How could they? They don't have you guys there."

"Oh, thank you, ma'am. That's very nice of you."

"Well, you're very nice."

"Thank you again, ma'am. Have a nice day, ma'am."

"You do the same. And have a happy new year."

"Likewise, ma'am. I hope to see you again, ma'am."

I continued down A-1A to the Casements, a house where John D. Rockefeller spent the last years of his life. Men, some of them even younger than the ones in the Kangaroo store, tipped their caps to me. Others looked up from cutting hedges or other outdoor chores to greet me. And, in the Casements, a female volunteer led me and an elderly couple from Oregon on a tour. The gentleman reached over to hold doors open for the volunteer, me and his wife. However, when we entered the study, I got to the door first and held it for his wife, who, I learned later, suffered from polio as a child and has walked with a cane ever since. And I continued to hold it for him and the volunteer, but he yanked it away from me.

Call his behavior chauvinism if you like. But I think his wife feels very fortunate to be married to him. And he's the sort of man who'd tell you he's the lucky one.

The kinds of expereinces I had today could make me forget that I'm transgendered. Actually, I have forgotten about it, at times: As far as people know I am a woman. And, in fact, I am.

I haven't even been talking about my transition with my parents. Perhaps my identity as a woman is becoming a "given" for them. It's no longer startling or novel to me when Dad and I hug or kiss, or when Mom and I do those things with even more emotion, and for longer, than we had before.

Now, I can't say what living here 24/7 for 365 (or 366, depending on the year) would be like. But the idea of moving here after my surgery and starting a new life (Can you do that when you live in the same town as your parents?) is, in some ways appealing.

Just as long as they all know I'm a woman.

More Lessons: One Love

This morning my mother, father and I stopped at a dollar store on US 1 near St. Augustine. I normally wouldn't come to such a store here, for we have 99-cent stores in New York (See, not everything's more expensive there!) that have, for the most part, the same kinds of merchandise. However, Mom said I could find a round hairbrush there. I left mine home, and they make hair-drying easier. I borrowed one from Mom, but you know...a proper lady--or a good woman, at any rate--returns whatever accessories or other accoutrements she borrows. Yes, even if the lender is her mother.

I also needed makeup applicator pads, because I'd lost the one in my compact. I was about to buy the small round makeup sponges, but Mom told me she likes the cotton ones better. So I bought two packs of them.

After we checked out, we went to a nearby Target store. Ironically enough, I found something I wanted to buy for Dominick but couldn't find in New York. And it's one of those things I thought I was even less likely to find in Florida than in New York. So, Dominick, if you're reading this...I'm not telling. But I think you know what it is!

And Dad pointed me to some tops that looked like a cross between T-shirts and ballerina tops. They're made of cotton, with a little spandex. Mom found one in a nice shade of gray, and advised me to get a size larger than I was going to buy. I also bought one in black and purple (my favorite color). And Dad found one in a sort of pumpkin color that I like a lot.

Then, to JC Penney and the movie theatre next door. This is the second time in my life as Justine that I've gone to the movies with Mom and Dad. The other time, in August, was my first time at the movies with them (or any other family member) in I-don't-know-how long. But I digress.

We saw Marley and Me. Now, my snobby New York English professor/Parisienne-wannabe self might've, left to her own devices, turned up her nose (not as finely sculpted as the one she imagines on une belle des boulevards, she grudgingly admits) at such a spectacle. And, yes, it is every bit as sweet (albeit with a sad ending) and just about as sentimental as I expected it to be. But, well, I let myself be taken by it, and I don't regret it. I think Dad, who was sitting to my left (as Mom was on his), might've seen a tear or two roll down my cheeks. One more thing to blame on the hormones! However, lots of people were crying as they left the theatre, and not all of them had my excuse.

I won't give too much of it away, but I wonder if anyone else noticed this detail: When John Grogan, who's just recently moved to Florida from Michigan, takes home the puppy he and his wife (who had to go on an assignment) adopted the day before, the song playing on the radio is Bob Marley's "One Love." The pup is entranced by the tune, which is how John came up with "Marley."

Actually, viewers only hear the first stanza of the song:

One love, one heart
Let's get together and feel all right
Hear the children crying (one love)
Hear the children crying (one heart)
Sayin' give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Sayin' let's get together and feel all right.

It is beautiful, but it's the only part of the song that 99% of the people know about. More people heard it on an Air Jamaica commercial that aired about 25 years after Bob Marley's death than ever listened to the song on his "Exodus" album. What they don't realize is that the song is not the feel-good tune depicted in the commercial, or by most American radio DJ's. Rather, it's what I like to think of as a spiritual call to arms:

Let them all pass all their dirty remarks (one love)
There is one question I'd really like to ask (one heart)
Is there a place for the hopeless sinner
Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own?
Believe me

One love, one heart
Let's get together and feel all right
As it was in the beginning (one love)
So shall it be in the end (one heart)
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
One more thing

Let's get together to fight this Holy Armageddon (one love)
So when the Man comes there will be no no doom (one song)
Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner
There ain't no hiding place from the Father of Creation

Sayin' one love, one heart
Let's get together and feel all right
I'm pleading to mankind (one love)
Oh Lord (one heart)

Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Let's get together and feel all right.

In other words, Bob isn't begging us to love; he's daring us into it, with the love he put into this song's message. I suppose one could say there's a milder version of this message in the movie, which is probably what stands between it and "chick flick" status. Not that it's a badge of dishonor; at least you can take your husband or boyfriend to this and he won't think you're punishing him for something he doesn't even know he's done. If you want to accomplish that, drag him into The Ya-Ya Sisterhood or Waiting to Exhale: two films which, by the way, I love and saw before I started to live as Justine.

Daring people to love: I haven't gotten to that point. I've just barely managed to dare myself to love.

OK, enough of my two-bit philosophy. (I walked out on the one philosophy class in which I enrolled while I was an undergraduate.) You're not reading this blog for that. You want to read more about a trans woman's developing relationship with her parents, right? OK, I'll give you some more of that.

Later this afternoon, we went out to eat. (I don't think I'll ever get used to five p.m. dinners!) The restaurant, called Blue, is part of a hotel along the stretch of A1A I rode the other day. This means that the windows look out on the dunes that tumble into beaches where Atlantic tides wash, and the clear sky took on the deep orange reflections of the sunset and turned into an inky shade of blue mirrored on the surface of the water.

I realize now why that stretch of the road, and of the coastline, is becoming so special to me. One very important reason, of course, is that it's where I've been spending my time when I'm not in the presence of Mom and Dad. I guess it's like one of those places people treasure because it's where they walk (or ride their bikes) when they're thinking or working through something, or simply taking in something they're learning.

But I also love it because I feel myself completing something--or an important stage of it, anyway--I began a long time ago. About three weeks before I began my life in sobriety, I was with my mother, father and my brother Tony as we drove up the California coast after the wedding of Mike, another brother, in Burbank. All through that trip, I drank as much as I could get away with and showed as much disdain as I could for my parents, brothers, California and everyone and everything else I could.

The second day of that trip, if I remember correctly, we checked into a hotel in a town called Cayucos. Tony and I went down to a narrow strip of sand with six-packs of Corona. After I'd emptied a few of those bottles down my esophagus, I waded into tides that belied the name of the ocean that stretched before us.

I don't think I walked more than twenty yards into that water when the sea floor dropped suddenly and precipitously from my feet. Instead of backing up, swimming with the current, or trying to regain my footing, I arced my body and bobbed in the ebbing waves, waiting for the tide to wash in or over me. I hoped that somehow the waves would take me, like a bottle bearing a note to...what?....where? I felt that there was nothing left for me on that land where my brother and parents were, and no reason to look ahead in space or time. If I ended up in Hawaii or Japan or the bottom of that ocean, would it matter? Perhaps they would mourn me for a day, a week, and remember me for however-many months or years. Or, if I survived, what would--could--I do next? There was still the proverbial hole inside me.

The beer Tony and I had been drinking, all of the beer and wine in the world, all of the booze, all of the water in that ocean, all of the world's oceans, lakes, rivers and glaciers, couldn't fill it. Nor could anything anyone else could , or would want to, do for or give to me. Any life I knew how to live couldn't fill it, nor--in my most horrifying realization of all--could my own death.

I turned 28 during that trip. A few days after I got home, I went out drinking on Saturday night and woke up on Tuesday afternoon. The following day I checked into an AA meeting. The next sixteen years, I managed not to let the hole expand even further, but I never could keep the storm of nihilism completely at bay: It muttered like thunder through a horizon just beyond my sleep.

Early in my transition from Nick to Justine, I realized I was in the next stage of what I'd begun when I stopped drinking: The recovery of my life was turning into the recovery of my self. Now I also realize that I am reclaiming the love I am--and everyone is--meant to give and have. My newly-developing relationship with my parents is one of the most satisfying manifestations of this.

The relationships and the people (or dogs or cats or whomever) may be different, but there really is only one love.

I understood that today as I was looking at the orange hues turning scarlet and darkening with the sea into inky blue mirrors for stars and moonlight. At the end of the day, at the edge of the sea, there is only that: one love. I have, and have always had, only two choices: to live with, by and for it, or to die. However imperfectly, I am beginning to live by my decision to choose one love.

Saying No

The setting was completely different. Back then, I was in a liquor store in Washington Heights. Today, I was in a store called Kagaroo: one of those convenience stores where, among other things, sport fishermen buy bait, tackle and six-packs. And today I had a brief conversation exchange with one of those customers.

Now, I've stopped in stores like it during bike rides along this part of the Florida coast. The recreational anglers--many of whom seem to make their hobby their lives--have been invariably courteous and polite to me. Guys whose limbs are covered in tatoos have held doors open for me, offered to let me go ahead of them on the checkout line even though they were there long before me, and say things, "Pleeas'd ta meeet ya, miss." (!) Today one even tipped his cap to me as I rode across the bridge from which he cast his line.

But in the store in which I stopped today, just south of Saint Augustine Beach, I had an exchange with one of those men that led to another encounter that made me woozy with deja vu, as Kurt Vonnegut said in one of his novels--Breakfast of Champions, if I remember correctly.

The man, who looked older than most of the others, wished me a merry Christmas and asked where I was from. "New York," I demurred. "Visitin' family?" I nodded. "Married?" I nodded again. "Well, I hope he's good ta ya?" I smiled. "Oh, he's wonderful," I replied, almost simperingly. "Well, I hope y'all have a happy new year." I nodded one more time. "Thank you. You do the same."

Then he shuffled to the checkout counter and I went to fetch the pack of sugarless gum I wanted. Behind the counter was a tough redneck's mother, wife or sister (or all of the above) who calls everyone "hun," including the man I talked to, and me.

He was buying two six-packs, two forty-ounce bottles, another bottle of some kind of liquor--vodka, I think. "Y'all gotta stop with this stuff," she drawled raspily. "I want y'round for more years."

He asked for a pack of Marlboros. "I don' mean to hurt yer feelins," she said. "But I gotta. I want to keep y'alive. "

"I'm OK."

"No! Look at ya...Yer stomach's swollen and yer face is all red. This is the last time I'm lettin ya' buy this stuff. Ya heah?" He didn't respond.

After he paid and left, she checked out my pack of gum. "I didn' wanna hurt his feelins'"

"Well, that's what you have to do sometimes."

"I know. But..."

"Hurting his feelings won't kill him. But cirrhosis of the liver will."

"I hope I didn't go too far!"

"Oh, no. You gave him exactly what he needs: You showed him that you care."

I was thinking about that day, so many years ago, when a liquor store owner refused to sell me the bottles of cognac and vodka I wanted to buy. I slammed two twenty-dollar bills, which in those days was more than enough for both, on the counter. "What's your problem?"

"I'm not selling to you."

"Fine. I'll report you to the better business bureau."

"Be my guest."

About a year later, I tried, for the third time, to become clean and sober. You know what they say about the third time being the charm.

Did that woman today spark any recognition in that man? It didn't look that way, but maybe it didn't seem that way, either, when I had that exchange nearly half of my life ago with that liquor store owner in Washington Heights.

And today I had the privilege of riding in all sorts of other beauty: much of it from the sea and landscapes, but some from other sources. Dinner with Mom and Dad followed.

In Beauty

Today I took the bike ride--at least part of it, anyway--I'd planned to take yesterday, before dinner. It's turning into one of my favorites: down the old coastal highway, a.k.a. Route A1A, from Flagler Beach to Daytona Beach.

There the Atlantic Ocean stretches further than anyone can see. The same could be said for the shorelines of New Jersey or Cape Cod. But, while those northern waters--which I always believed to be reflections of my soul, at least during those times I believed I had one (Don't worry, I'm now sure that I have one, however imperfect it may be!)--have an almost steely quality to them, the waters you see just over the dunes on the side of the road have a gentler, though equally deep, shade of blue, even in the rip tides that kept me and everyone else on the beach from swimming today.

Back in August, when I came to my parents' house for the first time in five years, I first acknowledged the beauty, aesthetic and holistic, of the hue in that water. Before that, I would immerse myself in it but remain somehow convinced that because I had spent so much time with the colder, grayer, and presumably more dangerous waters of the north, I was somehow more intelligent and experienced than those who knew only the warmth and comparative gentleness of the waves here.

While I will always cherish those walks and swims I took in New Jersey, Montauk and Capes Cod and Ferrat, I realize now that those littoral scenes were simply more familiar to me than any other. And, I saw the ocean I grew up with held the promise, or the fantasy, of places on the other side where I somehow believed I could find refuge. Of course, I was always looking to escape myself but would tell myself that I wanted to get away from my parents, school, the prospect of a bourgeois life, when in fact I wanted to get away from life itself. Which meant, of course, that I wanted to run away.

Lord Byron didn't say to run from beauty. He wrote "She walks in beauty." All right, so that's not even the whole first line of that poem. But even if he'd written nothing else, he'd deserve his fame. But I digress...Sometimes I'd like to take that epigram as a kind of spiritual instruction. Byron was writing about a woman whose face and eyes combine the best of what's dark and of what's bright. In other words, he was describing a complex beauty, or the beauty of complexity. And, even though I was, and sometimes still am, called a frighteningly complicated person, my view of that ocean, not to mention life itself, was entirely without complexity. That, of course, is why I held on to those cold, grayish reflections.

It's only now that I'm realizing how complex these warmer and more radiant waters actually are. In those azure and veridescent hues, light seems dance with the depths of those waves. And I realize now that I would not allow myself to be taken with the beauty I saw precisely because it was so complex and diverse, and my world-view was a monochrome colored by my anger.

The day after Christmas isn't supposed to be this way. But so what? Maybe, just maybe, I'll learn how to walk in beauty after all. Somehow I think it would be even better than walking on water. I guess cycling with beauty is a good first step, and a wonderful part of the journey to living by my essence: Justine, who was there even when my old self didn't want her--which is to say, didn't want me.

Yes, I'll walk in beauty. Want to come with me?

Christmas, Then and Now

When I woke up this morning, I saw a lemon tree a few feet from my window. Its fruit glowed like little suns among the branches.

Six years ago, I woke up on Christmas morning to bare trees, a rocky dirt path and a stone house covered with snow.

So why am I mentioning these two holiday mornings on the same page? The contrast I've just described is almost reason enough. But the real reason why I've brought up Christmas 2002 is that it was the last holiday, before this one, that I spent with family members.

Yesterday I arrived at the home of my mother and father. That day had its contrasts, too: When I left my place in New York, the temperature hovered right around the freezing point, and rain alternated and mixed with sleet. Ice and hard-packed snow lined the sides of the streets, and many of the sidewalks looked like volcanic glaciers. From the bus I took from the Port Authority Terminal to Newark Airport, I could barely see the sides of the New Jersey Turnpike, as a fog had crept in and wrapped around, and clung to, signposts and siderails.

However, when I got off the plane in Jacksonville, the air glowed as warm as the sun that began to set as Dad drove me and Mom back to the house. My tan courduroy skirt, black pantyhouse, holiday-toned short-sleeved sweater and black cardigan were clearly too much; of course the jacket I wore over them was in the trunk, with my suitcase. Mom said the outfit, especially the short-sleeved sweater (knitted with bands of red, gold, black, white and grey) were nice, and I have worn the outfit I just described (along with the red slingbacks) on more than a few holiday-season occasions. But it definitely wasn't Florida.

Now, for that Christmas half a dozen years ago, I was dressed right: cable-knit sweater and courduroy pants, if I remember correctly. You might say it was one of my better boy-drag outfits. It also made perfect sense, not only for the weather, but for the fact that I was in rural Connecticut. That's where my brother Tony was living; a few months later, he, Rose, Lauren and Daniel would move to the Jersey shore, just a couple of towns away from where he, my other brothers and I went to high school.

That Christmas morning in Connecticut looked like a Burl and Ives illustration, which appeals to even someone as cynical as I am(!). And I never dreamed of a warm-weather Christmas, but I am enjoying this one. On the other hand, as you can imagine, I didn't come here for the weather.

The time I spent with Mom and Dad back in August made me want to come back. Imagine that! (Is my teenaged, or even thirty-something, self listening?) Somehow I knew I wasn't being naively optimistic in wanting to return after that week I spent here in August. We all agreed that it was a good visit, and I knew it wasn't just a matter of everything going just right and being just so.

What I realize now is that we were ready for the kind of time we spent together. Up to that time, I had assumed that it was a matter of my parents' readiness to see me. I kind of suspected they'd reached that point when they offered to accompany me to my surgery and to let me stay with them as I recover, not to mention that they offered to help me in other ways. But what I didn't realize was that, in some ways, I would need the lessons I've learned over the past few years.

The funny thing is that what has helped me in this situation are things I've learned from teaching. For one thing, people learn in their own ways and at their own pace. I could be Socrates and Anne Sullivan rolled up into one, and my students wouldn't learn if, for whatever reasons, they aren't ready. But they're ready more often than you think, and sometimes at moments when you don't expect them to be.

All of what I've just said about teaching applies to my relationship with my parents. Before my August visit, they had seen me in female clothes and make-up once. I knew it couldn't have been easy for them, and it took time before they could see me again. I was nervous although eager on my way down; I wondered what it would be like for them to see me living a day, a week as Justine. How would they react to seeing me in a nightgown? (They didn't.) And, during that week my father even took me shopping.

When I came down yesterday, my mother pointed to the small ceramic tree on the entertainment center. (They haven't had a regular Christmas tree for several years, my mother said; it's just "too much" for her and my father.) On that tree hung three teardrop-shaped Christmas ornaments. One on of them "Angie", my mother's name, was written in gold paint; another had "Nick," my father's name (and my former name) on it. And, to the right of them hung a ball with "Justine" in gold lettering. I started to sniffle and shed a few tears.

Actually, the ball with my name actually was "Justin" with an "e" added to it. There weren't any with the name "Justine," my mother said. I know that when I see personalized key-chains and such, there never seem to be any with my name on it. I guess it's just not that common. So I appreciated that ornament all the more.

And, this morning, Mom and Dad had a couple of gifts I hadn't anticipated. One was a nice leather shoulder-bag/organizer. The other was a long, satiny hostess robe in a pretty shade of green. I'd been meaning to buy something like that for myself to wear to bed during the winter months. How did she know. All right: Do I need to ask that question?

Since I began my journey from living as a man to being a woman, mom has given me some of her jewelery and a few items of clothing, including a black knitted sweater/bolero jacket that everyone (including me) loves when I wear it. But this is the first time someone in my family has given me something made specifically for a woman as a Christmas gift, or for any other special occasion. And, it's the sort of thing Mom wears. (In fact, she said she bought one like it, in red, for herself.) So, I felt in some way that not only was she accepting me as Justine; she was also welcoming me into her world, if you will.

I'm sorry if you think I'm making a big deal over a robe I got for Christmas. But I love it.

It fits perfectly.

Remembering Other Friends and a Cat

It's a good thing I've been so busy the past few days. I know, you're wondering where I find the time to write in this blog. Well, I'll just say that until now, this blog hasn't recorded how much I've slept. Nor should it.

In any event, all the activity has kept my mind off things that would normally preoccupy me on the 22nd and 23rd of every December. Yesterday, the 22nd, was the anniversary of Cori's suicide, as I mentioned in my previous post. And today is even more intense: three anniversaries, all of them deaths. One happened when I was very young; the other two occured on the same day in 1991.

Seventeen years ago, I lost Caterina and Kevin. Who were they? My first cat and my first AA sponsor. They both came into my life at about the same time: I met Kevin during my first few days of sobriety, and I adopted Caterina not long after my 90th day without alcohol or drugs. If any of you who've been in AA or any of the other twelve-step programs, you know that 90 days is your first major milestone: It's recommended that you make it to 90 meetings in that time (I beat that easily; I once went to five meetings one rainy Saturday.) and, after that, ask someone to be your sponsor.

I don't have to tell you that 23 December 1991 was one of the more depressing days in my life, and wasn't made easier with the knowledge that both were destined to die sooner rather than later, and that, if nothing else, their suffering ended. They were both very, very sick: Caterina was old (She was close to ten years old when she and I adopted each other.) , and Kevin's immune system fell apart so thoroughly that it took a long and particularly thorough autopsy to determine what, exactly, killed him. However, the cause of the pneumonia that finally took him was clear: AIDS. He was one of many people in the twelve-step programs who died that way during the late '80's and early '90's, which were the first few years I spent sober. John, my second AA sponsor, also died that way nearly four years later. So, between them, Kevin and John guided me through my first decade without intoxicating substances.

At least John, Kevin and Caterina died when I had developed some resources, however rudimentary, for dealing with grief. But the first death I expereinced on the 23rd of December came much, much earlier in my life, years before even Cori's death. Adam had also killed himself, though by different means and for different reasons (at which I can, to this day, only guess) from Cori's.

Adam, who lived alone, turned on gas in his oven. Perhaps I will seem callous in saying this, but it really is a minor detail: Once you're dead, it really doesn't matter how you died, does it? Well, I guess to some of the living, it does, although their interest is, more often than not, questionable.

And what of the reasons why? I guess the previous answer applies here: They don't really matter to the dead person, only to the living. And why? One of Albert Camus's characters killed himself because someone didn't say "hello" to him that day. Just about any reason you can think of, someone else has had and didn't kill him or herself. This, I think, is the reason why so many people--and the religions they follow--say that people who kill themselves are immoral and weak, and their act is as evil as (or even more evil than) any homicide.

Now, I'm no expert on the subject (How, exactly, does one become one?), but I think that the ostensible reason a person might have for committing suicide isn't actually the impetus for the act--at least not by itself. Most people don't off themselves because other people didn't greet them, or even over seeing the sorts of things Adam saw in Bergen-Belsen. Or, for that matter, over the same dilemma about gender identity that followed Cori over the edge and me to the brink.

No, I belive that people who kill themselves--or who think seriously about doing it--are, in some way, like cancer sufferers. People who off themselves, or try to, are almost invariably suffering from depression. Sometimes it is overt; other times it is hidden so deeply that people claim not to understand why their friend, classmate, brother, sister or whomever made thirteen loops in the rope looped around his or her neck, pointed the barrel to his or her temple or leapt off the George Washington Bridge as Rufus did in James Baldwin's Another Country. Rufus's depression manifested itself as anger much like the kind I used to carry; others hide it or sublimate it for as long as they can.

In spite of their efforts, they suffer a kind of mental and emotional meltdown analogous to the shutdown and destruction of organs in the cancer patient's body. It reaches a point at which neither they nor anyone else can reverse it; if other people notice, all they can really do is to keep that person from harming him or her self, and to do whatever possible to help that person gain the tools or other resources he or she needs to stay alive long enough for a cure or remission. Telling them that pain is temporary is like telling a cripple that he, too, will win eight gold medals if he follows Michael Phelps' training regimen.

Anyway...I do know this much: The two most difficult days of almost every year are almost over for this year. I had dinner with Dominick a little while ago; now it's time to pack and do other things I need to do to get ready for tomorrow, when I fly to my parents' house. That, too, will pass, if more quickly than I'd like.

If only Toni, Cori and Adam knew...

Remembering a Female Friend

This and tomorrow's date were, for much of my life, the most difficult part of every year to get through. So far this year, it's been, if not easier, at least more productive and fulfulling.

It was on this date, many years ago, that Cori hung herself from a rafter in the house where she was living. The evening before, she called me. She spoke vaguely about how everything felt "dim and grim." No love in her life, no job, no permanent address, her family not speaking to her. I told her that all those things were temporary--something I didn't believe myself at that time--and that for someone as beautiful and intelligent as she was (something I meant from my heart)--her turn had to come, and soon.

Then she talked--rambled, really, which was not so unusual, except that her voice felt calm--no, that's not quite the word, nor is serene--in an otherworldly kind of way. It was that sort of calm, the kind of sun seen in the sky before the so-called perfect storm comes in. "I'm coming right over," I said.

"No, that's OK. I'll be all right."

"I just want to make sure..."

"Don't worry about me..."

"You just guaranteed that I will."

"I'm..."

"I'm coming."

A few minutes later I walked up the rickety stairs to the room she rented in that house. I motioned to knock but saw the door ajar. I pushed it softly and walked slowly, almost on tiptoes, toward her back. She turned.

We embraced--not in that strangely truncated hug of white Americans, but as if we were holding on for life; both of us were drowning, but I ostensibly had gone to help her. The truth is, I needed her as much as, possibly even more than, she needed me at that moment. I knew she was in a bad way, but I didn't yet have the sesnse of trying to save her life. It was more like I was trying to save myself, to redeem myself--from or for what, specifically, I wasn't sure.

Finally, after some back-and-forth about how we felt lost, abandoned and misunderstood, she told me something I'd suspected, sort of, but did not have the words or spiritual means to comprehend, much less communicate, even less to understand: the dilemma of her life. Of course, I was nowhere near acknowledging my own conundrum, but I nonetheless talked with Cori.

"I hate this fucking body." She pointed toward her crotch. "Fuckin' hate it"

"What's wrong with it?"

"I'm not supposed to have it. I'm not supposed to be a man." Exactly what I would've said about myself--and didn't want to hear.

Yes, Cori was born male, in the same sense I was. She spent the last night of her life with me, crying herself to sleep for the same reasons.

Cori, of course was not her given name. But I have chosen to remember her that way, as a young woman. I hope that she has other vessels bearing her memory and spiritual essence into the world. And I hope some of those human bearers are better than I was, or am.

Only in the last couple of years have I begun to lose some of the guilt I felt for so long. Still, I sometimes wonder why I got a chance to live as I always wanted, while Cori and so many others didn't.

What Would You Tell Your Younger Self?

More snow, more sleet, more freezing rain. And all that stuff is going to freeze over tonight.

All right, it is officially the first day of winter. But does it have to begin with slush?

And Mom told me it was 70 degrees when I talked to her this morning. She was sitting on her patio, watching birds. I just hope the roads are clear when I go to the airport on Wednesday.

If any young people are reading this, take note: You actually start to look forward to spending time with family members! If someone had told me that when I was your age, I would have asked whether he or she was smoking.

Lately, it's become fashionable to ask people, particularly women, what they would say to their younger selves. When I first started living full-time as Justine, five years ago, I thought a lot about that question, though no one had posed it to me.

At first, I fell into the "coulda-woulda-shoulda" trap. I shouldnta walked out on that therapist who, in my fourth session with her, said that I needed to "work on" my drinking and drug use and suggested that after that, I should see a gender specialist. Before that, I didn't know that there were such people as gender specialists; at that moment, I hated her for letting me know. And in my mind, I sneered at her the way I did to anyone else who expressed concern over my drinking and drug abuse, or suggested that there were other issues I wasn't addressing.

For years, I told myself that the real reason I didn't continue with that therapist was that I couldn't afford it. However, she worked on a sliding scale, and I was paying much less than most of her patients. And, knowing her, she might've lowered the rate even more, or given me more time to pay, if I'd asked.

If I'd continued, I woulda begun to deal with my issues. And I probably wouldnta been in a marriage that neither I nor my ex should have been in. And I woulda...oh, the list goes on. But the bottom line is that I coulda begun to live as Justine much earlier than I did. But then again, I know that my experience of living female would have been very different from what I've experienced during these past five years.

OK, so no woulda-coulda-shoulda. My best answer to "What would you tell your younger self?" came to me when I was bike riding one crisp, breezy fall afternoon: "I am always here for you. I will never leave you, any more than you can leave me. Don't be afraid of me; I'm at your side and by your side. And I love you."

That was the first time that, in any way, shape or form, I expressed any sort of love for myself, much less for the teenaged boy that I was, and who is as much a part of me as anyone else I've ever been. And I realized how grateful I had to be to him: After all, he endured a lot (nearly all of it emotional and spiritual) to survive long enough to become me. Sometimes it made me sad and angry: He suffered, but I was the one reaping the benefits. Not that I haven't suffered as Justine; now I have more inner resources for dealing with it.

The truth is, that teenaged boy and I have always needed each other. And now I am learning that my younger self is as much a resource for me now as the woman I am now might've been to him had I acknowledged that I am, and have always been, her.

But what teenager listens to a middle-aged woman (or man), especially one who is of his or her own blood, and spirit? I couldn't have. Maybe that's how it is for other teenagers, too.

At least there is the future. The slush won't always be here. But I'll always have it, for whatever purposes. When I grow up, I'll be thankful.