Undercover Girl: Growing up transgender

Chapter 1: Island Soul

I needed a restaurant not far from our schools, with comfortable seating, some privacy, and interesting food. Island Soul fit the bill. I found street parking on the block behind, walked around the corner, and down Rainier Avenue.

I got to the door at noon. It looked like I was the first customer.

Hello, will you have a table for one?

For two, thank you.

The server led me to a table not far from the door.

My thoughts were racing. I was glad I got there a few minutes before Mary arrived. Rehearse how to start. But I’d been through this before; I even had a script. This wasn’t much different from when I told Linda. Why so nervous?

The server brought two settings, two waters, and two menus.

I studied the menu, trying to forget the conversation I was about to have. Conch fritters? What will Mary think? Coconut shrimp? Will she still be friends with me? Tostones? I ordered the conch fritters. Mary would probably like sharing those.

Anne had suggested I tell a few female colleagues. They could keep an ear open for workplace gossip, and may have advice. That had been six months before, and I am slow at homework. Three months since starting hormones, and changes were starting to show.

I am a school psychologist. I’m closer to psychologists than anyone else, and Mary is my closest friend among the psychologists. When Anne gave me that assignment, Mary was the first I had thought of telling. Mary had come out to me five years before. She had asked if I thought it would be alright for her to bring her partner to the department’s holiday party. How could it not have been alright? Mary and I became friends. We shared a love of writing. Maybe I could be out to her. But this was a different kind of coming out. Mary would be the easiest. As I change, everyone will know. How do I tell them all? How many losses?

Mary arrived soon enough. Hi John, so sorry I’m late. It’s hard to pull away. It’s good to see you.

It’s great to see you, too! I just got here. I need to get with a student by 1:00. I ordered some conch fritters if you’d like to share. How are you?

Those look great! I’m OK. Have you ordered yet?

Just the fritters. I’m thinking either the jerk chicken or the curry.

The server was back, looking at Mary. Do you need a few minutes?

Yes, please. The server attended another customer, who had just walked in. How is your year going?

I’m behind as usual. Seven cases are due before the end of the month. I should stay late to catch up. But it’s hard to stay much later than I do.

You’ve got that long ferry commute.

It’s not as bad as it seems. How many people get to sleep on their commute? On a sun deck? Or watch orcas? I wasn’t convincing, even to myself. Or write. Except that I never seem to write.

I protect writing time. Work bleeds over if I’m not careful. It’s good not to be working on Friday and I can spend the whole day writing.

I sipped my water, absently swallowing ice chips. This was hard.

Can you write on the boat?

I could do that. But I’ve got a stack of newspapers, journals, magazines, and I like to read. Sometimes I just like to lie in the sun and dream about orcas.

You should write. It’s like running. I’m getting in better shape the more I write.

You’re right, of course.

The server was back. What can I get you?

I’ll have the jerk chicken and a diet Coke.

That sounds good. I’ll have the same.

Very good. It will be just a few minutes.

It was now or never. I bet my e-mail puzzled you I began.

You did have me curious. She was smiling gently.

Forgive me for being mysterious.

More customers arrived and were led past us.

The server set down two diet Cokes. Your chicken will be just a few more minutes.

Thank you, I said, looking down at the table. The server leaves, heading back to the kitchen.

Why is eye contact so hard?

Do you know what kind of sauces these are? Mary asks, both of us distracted.

I think the pink sauce is a garlic aioli thing. The other is something citrusy, like mango. We both use conch pieces to sample each sauce. I like the garlic one best.

I gather my thoughts again. I’m sorry for being mysterious. I feel Mary staring but I am still looking down at the table. I didn’t feel comfortable just putting it in an e-mail. Mary, there’s something I’ve been dealing with for the last 40 years, and I decided to do something about it.

The door opens, and two men enter, laughing loudly. I watch them, as they take seats at the back of the room. Do I want to do this? What will these guys think if they hear me?

I was still looking down at the table. Well. I’ve been feeling this way for a long time. Hell, I’ll just cut to the chase, Mary. I am transgender, the T in LGBT. I identify more with women than with men. I’ve been getting gender therapy for a year. I started hormones a few months ago. My therapist told me I need to start telling people at work. I was staring down at my hands, at the fritters, at the tabletop. I took a sip of Coke. Too late now, the genie was out of the bottle and there’ll be no getting her back in. There’s another pause.

Mary’s eyes go above my head. "I didn’t see this coming." The server set down two loaded plates of chicken.

But, I heard you order the same thing as me.

She laughed. Another pause. This is big news. She seemed to be mulling it over.

I know it’s strange.

It’s not so strange. You mean you dress like a woman? Like on weekends? How is Linda taking all this?

Um . . . yes. I dress, like a normal woman. I’m not like a drag queen. It’s more than the clothes. Linda has been supportive. She goes shopping with me. She calls me her ‘Big Barbie’. I’m sure it’s not what she wanted, but she is supportive.

She is smiling. That is amazing. You two have such a special relationship. She loves you.

Yes, she does. I look around, conscious of the other diners.

The server is back. How is everything?

This is wonderful, I say.

Fabulous.

Can I get you anything else?

We’ll be fine for now Mary says, and waits for the server to move on. So your therapist said you should tell people?

Yes. I’ve been on hormones. My appearance is changing. People are going to think something is wrong. My friend Jody, she told people at her work, because she didn’t want them to think she had a serious illness, like cancer.

What kind of changes?

Skin changes are the most visible so far. My skin is smoother, the pores finer. It’s the first thing Linda noticed. When I was a kid I had bad acne, the worst my dermatologist had ever seen. It disappeared from my face when I was 19, but still I had a lot on the rest of my body until this year. It’s clearing up.

That’s good!

"It is good. There have been other changes. I’m losing upper body muscle mass. And my chest . . . I’m . . . I’m growing there."

How do you feel?

I feel great. I am sleeping better. And I’m calmer. I used to get such bad panic attacks. You know Red Square at UW? I wasn’t able to cross it. I could walk around the perimeter, but not across it

What would happen if you tried to cross it?

I felt like I was going to fall off the face of the earth. Or that I would go crazy and have a screaming fit. Open spaces did that to me for 30 years. But here’s the thing. Those panic attacks stopped five years ago, just after I told Linda. And I used to get bouts of depression. I now know those were related to testosterone surges. I look around, conscious of the other diners. Am I too excited?

This is amazing! It’s a good thing for you then?

Yes, it is.

What are you going to do? Are you going to live as a woman?

We call it transition. Plates of food are being set down behind me. Too hell with it, I don’t care that people hear me. I told Linda transition feels like a black hole that I’m orbiting. Maybe I will transition. I don’t know. It depends how viable I am as female. We do this in small steps. There’s a cross dressing social club in town, Emerald City. I’ve gone out a few times with them.

Cross dressed?

Yes. Getting comfortable, learning how to dress right, learning makeup, and learning how to move right. I don’t want to look like a drag queen. I just want to look normal, ordinary. Golly, Mary, I should tell you my name! It’s Jill. Jill Davidson.

Wow Jill! I’m glad to meet you. She smiled, I smiled, and we shook hands. Does anyone else know in our department?

You’re the first. There are a few people outside our department. Do you know Catherine, who directs the Employee Assistance Program? She knows, and Lisa. But no one else in our department knows yet. I’m going to be coming out slowly. I’m not sure who to tell next. But I think one person at a time.

I’m honored you told me. This is a good way.

I was talking so much. I consciously had to start eating my chicken, which was untouched and cold.

We talked for an hour, longer than I had expected. We paid, and headed out the door, both walking in the same direction. To our mutual surprise, her Mustang was parked in front of my Explorer, a block from the restaurant.

She gave me a hug. I love you like a sister.

And I, you. Thanks for listening.

I drove down Rainier towards Alaska on my way back to Kimball feeling relieved, but uneasy. Mary was not outright rejecting, she sounded supportive. But someone at work now knew about me. Is it too big a burden, to give a friend a secret? What if she is offended, but feels too loyal as a friend, or is in too much shock, to show how she feels? Linda and I felt close to Mary and her partner, but that was when everyone thought I was straight. There was tension between the lesbian community and the transgender community. Being lesbian didn’t mean she was accepting of someone trans, even though she had been my friend until now.

I parked in the usual spot, near the walkway under the maple, on 24th. I locked my car and walked up, unlocking the gate. I unlocked the outside door of the portable, and then, my office door. Good, no messages. I set up for Rosalind. I completed the front page of the Woodcock-Johnson cover sheet, wrote her name, today’s date, her sex (female), her birth date, checking everything against e-SIS. Examiner’s name: that would be me, John MacDonald for now. This particular form doesn’t ask my sex.

I went up to Sara’s class. They were already back from recess, and it was time for silent reading. Sara looked up from her book, walked quietly to Rosalind’s seat. She bent down.

Rosie, honey, Dr. MacDonald is here. He wants to do some testing with you.

I crouch down, eyes level with Rosie’s, smiling.

But I don’t want to be tested!

This isn’t like other tests. He plays games with you.

Games?

Well, they’re not really games I say. I want you to do your best on them. Some things are going to be easy. Other things will be hard. We won’t stay with anything for long.

Rosie, they’re really fun. You’ll have a good time. A familiar voice is next to my ear. What was her name?

I don’t want to miss Art. We’re having Art soon.

Art is at 2:30 Sara said.

I’ll make sure you don’t miss Art. C’mon, Rosie. It won’t take us long. Let’s go down to my office. Rosie stands up, looks doubtfully at her friend, and then follows me. My office is this way. We walk down the corridor, past the commons, and outside, the sun is warm and glorious, the Cascade peaks glistening. My office is in Portable 4 down the stairs. Rosie is silent. Do you like recess Rosie? What do you like to do?

I like to play on the big toy. And I like to run. Sometimes we play tag.

That was my favorite game when I was in third grade.

I don’t like math, it makes me sick.

I know, Rosie.

I unlocked the door and we went back, to my office.

Remember, I said we won’t stay on anything for too long. With each test, we start with things made for people younger than you, and those parts are going to seem easy, then we move on to work on things that are made for people older than you, and those parts are going to seem hard. When I say older people, I mean people in middle school, high school, or even college. I don’t want you to worry if it seems hard. I just want you to do your best, OK?

Rosie nods.

OK. Let’s start here. Rosie, what word is this?

Besides

Good. Read down the rest of this list for me.

When . . . said . . . every . . .around . . .green She proceeded through the list, reaching a ceiling: able-ish [abolish], confide-int [confident], solo-try [solitary], poor chase [purchase], min-ore [minor].

That was good, Rosie. We’re going to do another reading test next. I open the workbook. "Rosie, this sentence says ‘Dogs have four legs’. Is that true?

Yeah – except for my aunt’s dog, he only has three.

But for most dogs, most of the time, it’s true, right?

Yeah.

So we’re going to circle the Y for Yes, because most of the time it’s true. I circle the Y. Now read this sentence. This says ‘We eat milk with a fork’. Is that true?

No. She giggles.

So we circle the ‘N’ for ‘No’. Now, you read these next four sentences, and decide if the answer is yes or no. Work as quickly as you can without making mistakes.

She goes through each sentence, and circles the correct answer on each.

Good job, Rosie! Those are all correct. I turn to the next page. Now, when I tell you to start, I want you to read each of these sentences and decide if the answer is ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Work as quickly as you can without making mistakes. You’re going to have three minutes. If you finish before I say stop, let me know. You can start . . . right . . . now. I start the chronometer on my wrist watch, and watch her work down the page.

The three minutes are up. Good job, Rosie. You worked hard and got far. Now . . . (I turn to the next page in her workbook) we’re going to do some math. She makes a face. I want you to start here, with number 4, and do each of these in this row, then go on to the next row, and keep working to the bottom of the page. If you come to one you don’t know how to do, you can skip it.

She starts working. [2 + 5 = 7], [9 – 4 = 5] . . . [51 – 29 = 38]. Rosie looks up. I hate math.

I know Rosie… Just do what you can.

My Dad says I don’t have to do math. He says girls don’t need it.

What do you think?

I think my Dad is right. Math is hard, and I don’t want to do these. Tears are rimming each eye.

Rosie, remember I said some things will be easy, and some will be hard? I need to know what you can do and what’s hard.

I told you! I hate math! I don’t want to do these! She is shaking.

OK. Let’s come back to this test another time. I want to know what you can do, and to find that out I need you to be at your best. Would you like to draw for me?

She nods.

I’d like you to draw me a picture. Anything you want.

She draws a picture of a girl drawing at an easel. There’s a bigger person standing next to the girl. That person looks like a woman, wearing jeans and a long shirt.

Who’s that? I ask.

That’s you, watching me draw! She finishes the drawing in about 10 minutes, labels and all. She is smiling.

That is a great picture. Can I keep it?

Sure!

I think next we should do some writing. I take the workbook out again, open to Writing Samples. Rosie, this is a picture of a horse. Write a good sentence that tells what this animal is. We proceed through the writing test.

She is still smiling when we get to the end of the writing test. I now shift back to math.

Let’s go back to where we stopped before. I want you to try each problem. If you don’t know how to do a problem, you can skip it and try the next one.

She makes a face again, but she picks up the pencil, and starts working where she left off. She completes three more. I see her looking, questioning each one to herself, for another six items. A ceiling?

Rosie, do you know how to start this one?

No, I have no idea.

OK. I proceed to ask her about the other items.

We complete two more reading tests, one more math test, and one more writing test, and now it was 2:25. I already knew she had severe difficulties with calculation and math reasoning, and she had low writing fluency and math fluency. She had become upset again during a math reasoning test and I wasn’t sure if what I got was accurate. It’s time to go to Art, Rosie.

No, I want to stay here.

You like Art. Besides, I need to figure out how you did and what we’re going to work on the next time I see you.

Will you walk me to Art?

Of course We walk outside in the sun, up the stairs, into the building and back to her class.

Rosie takes her seat, and motions to me. Stay here, Rosie says.

Sara smiles at her. Rosie, we’re drawing a vase with flowers. See the model on the board?

I watch Rosie draw. After a few minutes, she is giggling with other girls. Rosie, I need to go back to my office to work on things. I’ll see you next week, OK?

OK. She is smiling. I go back to the portable.

I score her tests so far: Calculation, 28th percentile; Math Fluency, 3rd percentile; Applied Problems, 2nd percentile; Basic Reading Skills, 65th percentile. This is an interesting kid.

I found myself staring at the wall.

I like my job.

What’s with Rosie? Is it a math disability? Is it math anxiety? Both? Is she experiencing some kind of sexism? Absorbing a toxic message? And I looked at the picture she drew. That is definitely a woman standing next to her. She said it was me.

What had I done today? How did Mary feel? Had I offended her? She hugged me. But now the secret was out.

Chapter 2: Theater

In the days that followed, the generally good feeling I had, letting Mary know, was fading. Did she think I was nuts? Did I take advantage in some way? How was she handling this? How can anyone know how someone takes it? Get a grip.

Three weeks after my conversation with Mary, we had a monthly Department meeting. I arrived early, and took a seat on the side of the room with two empty seats next to me. Other psychologists arrived, and the seats were beginning to fill up. Mary appeared, and took the seat next to mine. She was smiling. Hi there! she said.

Hi, how are you? I said.

"The question is: how are you?"

I’m OK. Thank you for listening to me the other day.

Thank you for listening to me five years ago. You are a very brave person, you know.

I am? You’re OK with what we talked about?

How could I not be OK? You’re my friend.

Thank you.

A couple of weeks went by. There was an e-mail from Mary.

"Hi Jill, Janis and I saw that there was a play you and Linda might be interested in. It’s called Act a Lady and it seems to have a transgender theme. What do you think?"

Sure, it sounds good, I wrote back.

I was at the same time in Second Life, chatting with a few people at the Transgender Resource Center (TRC). We had been chatting, in fact, about our first comings out, and I had just told them about my lunch meeting with Mary.

Have a look at what my friend just sent, I said, and pasted Mary’s message.

Sharon wrote: Just wait. There’ll be a second message. They’ll want to meet Jill.

My e-mail dinged. It was from Mary.

J, just wanted to let you know that if you would like to go to the play as though it were ‘girls’ night out’ it wouldn't bother us at all. After all, we’ll be going to Capitol Hill.

My jaw dropped. :) was all I could manage in my return message.

I put on my A.N.A. blue jeans, blue-green sweater, and clogs. Underneath, my B forms. I got my wig on, and Linda helped me do my eyes. I wore the teal coat Linda had gotten me. We caught the 4:40 boat.

We parked in Mary and Janis’s driveway. I was shaking. We knocked, and their dogs greeted us. Then both Mary and Janis opened the door, and greeted me as Jill.

We talked in the kitchen as they got dinner ready. They said that I looked great.

I was fumbling for something in my purse. Mary took out her wallet, and told me how everything she used to put in her purse, she could put in her wallet. Wallets were so much better. I told her how I liked having sleek empty pockets. Mary talked about how she envied her brothers that they got to do things growing up that she wasn’t allowed to do.

Did you ever wish you were a boy? I asked her.

No.

That’s what’s different about us. Rationally, if I think about it, becoming female makes no sense. Women are treated like crap in society. Why would I want to become one? It doesn’t make sense to me. And yet, there it is. I can’t explain it.

Dinner was lovely, and time passed quickly. It was time to head to the theater. We decided to go in one car. went inside, and chose our seats.

The play itself wasn’t great. Men in 1920 in a small town in Michigan like to put on pageants, where they play all the female parts. A woman who is a Hollywood director passes through town and decides to help the men put on their shows. I don’t remember more details than that.

The play was over. We headed out the door. Mary took a picture of Linda, Janis, and I, and Janis took a picture of Mary and I. We headed to the car, Janis driving.

Mary turned to me in the car. You have to blog about this! Forget the damn civil war novel. You need to write your life now. It’s so rich! You need to blog about this!

The next day I began writing. I wanted Mary to understand why I was trans. I wanted to understand why I was trans. I found myself writing about my childhood, about all those times that Gender stared me in the face.

I needed a name for the blog. In my teens, despondent over what was happening to me and realizing I was stuck as a boy, I consoled myself with the idea that I could be a girl spiritually. I would attempt to live my life in a boy’s body as a girl would live it.

I could be an Undercover Girl.

If no one tells the story, it didn’t happen.

Chapter 3: A Normal American Childhood

I never wanted to be transgender. It’s always been there, like my beating heart. I don’t remember when I didn’t want to be a girl.

Life is a river. We’re walking along a stream. The stream takes us past many landscapes. We walk along the stream a while, it disappears, and then it emerges again. Sometimes you hear it, sometimes you wonder if you’ve lost it, if it’s dried up, or gone underground. But it’s always with us. You see it merge with other streams from places unknown. In time it’s a majestic river, fast and impossible to ignore. We marvel at the landscape we’re passing through, and you wonder why we’re looking at the landscape when the story is really about the river, and yet the river has cut the landscape, and it’s impossible to separate from it. You come to a place where steep cliffs make it impossible to keep going without letting the river take you. It’s converging on one goal, the run to the sea. But the stream doesn’t end at the sea. The sea is many streams coming together. Sometimes the sea flows backwards, overwhelming you in its flood.

I was born in 1955, the youngest of four children in an Irish-American Catholic family in South Orange, New Jersey, a bedroom community for New York City. The Village is proud of its Victorian character, streets still lit with gas lamps, sidewalks lined with tall oaks and maples. We lived on Richmond Avenue, up the hill east of the train station, with the Maplewood town line running along our front yard. Kids far outnumbered adults. I have a sister and two brothers. Dad was a stock broker, and my mom, a full time homemaker. We were wealthy enough that we had maids, all of whom were black.

Home

My earliest memory was when I was two. My grandmother was stuffing hard boiled eggs into my mouth. My mom had told her it’s what I would eat for breakfast. I was choking, trying to push them out, and still she persisted. To this day I can’t eat whole eggs without gagging, much as I love crêpes and everything made with eggs. I learned that I wasn’t the boss of me. There were unpleasant things people could make you do, even if they loved you.

I loved my grandmother. She would take me to Lord & Taylor’s or Bamberger’s and we would have lunch or tea in the restaurant.

She passed away from a heart attack when I was four. I heard her gasping. The rescue squad came to take her away, and then I was told she was in heaven. I wondered when I would see her again. My parents took me several times to visit her grave in Gates of Heaven cemetery. I learned people come and go. My uncle Bill’s diabetic golden retriever, Ginger, passed away soon after Grandma Morrison died, and Uncle Bill moved out of the house. I thought Ginger would be in heaven with Grandma, but I was told dogs didn’t have souls.

I didn’t understand how the natural world and the spirit world worked. There was heaven, where my grandparents were, and where I thought we came from. I had an active imagination, and where something didn’t make sense I forced sense on to it. I thought we were immortal, that there was a God, and that there were angels and fairies everywhere. That God answers your prayers if you were good.

My dad was 45, my mom 38, when I was born. My parents were not as playful as they might have been at 25. My dad would get home from work at 7, drink a few cocktails, and have dinner. When I was told to go to bed, he would tell me ghost stories while we lay in his bed. I craved that closeness with him. Dad never played outside with me, never went for walks, never went swimming, never played ball. I wasn’t bitter about it; this was just the way things were. On weekdays, the neighborhood was a female ghetto for adults. Women were moms, men disappeared. On weekends, dads were there, but all had projects.

My parents’ age meant that a lot of relatives in the previous generation were dying. I lost my last grandparent when I was seven.

My sister also left for college when I was seven, and she was married later that year. She was pregnant, her belly visibly growing. I asked my mom how the baby would come out. I was worried that when I had a baby, it would hurt. I thought I would hold off having a baby as long as I could, although I loved babies.

My sister moved out when she got married, and then my mom was the only other female in the house. My mom used to refer to things that happened when she was "a kid", and for some reason, I thought kid and boy were synonymous. I thought gender change was common, or that being a woman was something that just happened when you grew up. That it would happen to me.

My brother Pat joined the Army the year after Mary Ann left, and so he too had moved out.

Even my parents, who lived in the house, came and went. I spent time with our maids and ate meals in the kitchen with them. My parents had dinner in the dining room at 8 o’clock.

By the time I was 9, the maids had left too. I began to sink deeper inside myself.

My parents were having increasingly loud arguments as I lay in bed. My dad would complain about my mom’s cooking. With each dinner, he’d yell, "What is this crap?", and I would hear mom crying. Mom’s cooking wasn’t that bad, just predictable. Fried chicken, Minute rice and peas on Sundays, meat loaf on Mondays, spaghetti or goulash, occasionally pot roast, occasionally shepherd’s pie, always fish on Fridays, always baked beans and black bread on Saturdays. My Dad complained that she never made his traditional favorites. One night she tried to make fin n’ haddie, and the house filled with acrid smoke.

Gender

Watching my mom and dad, I might have developed poisonous ideas about women: that women were meant to cook and clean, and be humiliated if something wasn’t up to par. That the way to get what you wanted was with shouting and fists.

But it didn’t work that way. I’d like to say that I helped my mom cook and keep the house up, but I did not. I liked keeping Mom company and she taught me to cook. I especially liked helping her make cookies and cakes. We talked a lot, but I couldn’t tell her everything. I had no way of talking with my Dad. His deafness got in the way, and he would talk to cover up his difficulty listening.

My earliest specifically trans memory was playing with my sister's cosmetics at age 4 or 5. I don’t think I was punished or encouraged. I was trying to figure out what was different about boys and girls. Why did we look different? Why did people expect different things from us?

My mom took me to a shoe store when I was 7. After trying several sizes and then measuring my feet, the salesman said I had feet shaped like a girl's feet. I think he was thinking out loud about sizing. I seized on this, wondering if it had something to do with my wanting to be a girl, that I might be some sort of hybrid creature.

I was living a boy's life. I loved running, climbing, and rough-and-tumble play with my friends. At three I had a baseball uniform. At five I had a cowboy outfit with cap pistol and holster. I had a tractor that I pedaled around the block. I had trucks that I played with in the mud. I had an astronaut helmet. The neighbors called me John Glenn. They saw me as a normal boy.

At my third birthday my parents gave me a baseball uniform, bat and ball. I’m sure they thought it was cute, I’m sure they thought that it was just the thing to get a young boy. But I hated it. I already knew that men and boys played baseball, girls did not, and I didn’t like it. There is a picture of me, on the edge of tears, that night. I was probably made to put on the uniform when my father came home. There are also pictures of me laughing in the backyard with the bat and ball. Had it been a more egalitarian time, had I seen girls play ball, it might have been a joy to play. As it was, it was a reminder that I was a boy and there was no escaping fate.

My father gave me a Visible Man kit for my seventh birthday, which I had insisted on, and a Visible V-8 engine kit when I was eight, a Visible Head when I was nine. These were just beyond my skills to put together and understand and left me feeling stupid. Teaching me baseball was the same. I wasn't ready. My interest in those visible body models was related to my trying to make sense why our bodies were different and what makes us work, but probably every kid wondered that. I was sure I would be a doctor when I grew up.

School

I started Mrs. Field’s Nursery School at 4. She had a big backyard with swings and a sandbox. She had an upright piano and every day we would sing. She would read us stories. A girl a year older had me in tears one day, and they told me boys weren’t supposed to cry.

In first grade I had to do things that I didn’t know how to do. I tried to figure out what was going on from looking at what other people were doing, and being lost. We had our names in block letters on our desks, and we practiced the sounds of each letter, and the letters in our names. I remember a period of weeks thinking there was another child named John MacDonald, and not answering when that name was called. I was convinced, when John’s name was called, it didn’t involve me, it involved the boy who wasn’t me.

Being in a Catholic school, we learned that there were truths to be memorized (catechism), and that there were mysteries that no one could solve: miracles, the nuns told us. Gender was a set of mysteries.

I hated school in first grade. I learned how to fake being sick. One day my mom had enough. She got me in the car. When she got to the top of the hill above my school, she couldn't get me out. Mr. Preston picked me up and carried me into the school, and I was sentenced to kindergarten for the day.

I struggled with learning to read in second grade. At the beginning of fourth grade, I was switched from the lowest reading group to the highest. I was with the smartest kids, and they told our teacher that she had made a mistake. But she said she hadn’t made a mistake. During fourth grade, I read my brother’s Hardy Boys collection, most of that reading done by flashlight under bed covers while listening to the first Beatles tunes. Then it was on to my brother’s textbooks. Reading would help me make sense of things.

The irony of my school's name, Our Lady of Sorrows, was not lost on me.

Children at Play

I played with two or three girls on our block. Deirdre was taller than me and athletic, and often dressed like me in jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers. She taught me to do cartwheels. I played dolls and house with other girls in the neighborhood. I have no memory of being discouraged.

My Dad told me that it was weird I had friends who were girls. He said I was supposed to hate girls, and he wondered if I was growing up too fast. This puzzled me.

My playgroup cut trails through yards and had clubhouses in garages and trees. Our crowd was aware of other groups on other blocks, with whom we formed alliances. With some, we had fights with rocks and steel poles and