A friend asked me today, “What qualities do you look for in a friend?” In my male life, not so long ago, I would have rattled off a quick list, almost without thinking, but in my male life, truthfully, I knew very little of friendship, and truthfully, had only a passing interest in it. A friend was someone I could go fly fishing with. Someone I could share fish stories with as we drove to the stream or the beach. Or, as Deirdre McClosky observed in her memoir, Crossing, a friend was someone I knew “who wouldn’t actually take a gun to me in the street.”

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The call was waiting for me when I walked into the house: my brother. He was going to be in town this weekend, and wondered if we could get together for lunch…and talk. I need to say at this point, that we haven’t seen each other in about five years. The last time we spoke on the phone was almost exactly six months ago, when he called in response to my coming-out letter telling him I was about to start my RLE. Call me this evening, the message suggested, so I did.

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Okay, I may have to modify my (apparently) rose-colored viewpoint. I won’t repeat the conversation in detail, but it involved myself and my next door neighbour, yesterday. What I learned was that even though our conversation was “polite,” trans-phobia is alive and well, and living in my neighbourhood.

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When I had to come home early from my first Esprit, it was Jacqueline who sought me out and sat me down on my last morning, after everyone else had gone off to class or their other activities, and talked to me. She knew I was upset, even though (I thought) I had done a pretty good job of not letting it show. But she knew. And so she sat with me, there in the hotel room and talked to me about the letdown that was inevitably to follow, and how important it would be to maintain the friendships that had grown, so suddenly, and with such intensity over the past three days.

“Did someone say something to you?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I just had a feeling that you might need someone to talk to. I’m a pretty intuitive person.”

Indeed. And a kind and a generous one, like so many of the people I met there. So when she flew back to Montreal, my heart flew back there with her, too.

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It’s funny how goodbyes are never as final as we think they are. Don’t believe me? Let’s play a little word association game. I’ll say ‘Goodbye.” “Good riddance.” “I’ll miss you.” “See you tomorrow.” “See you when you get back.” “See you in court.” “See you in heaven.” “You’ll always…

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It was lovely afternoon, sunny after weeks of cloud and rain. I had been up the street, visiting my friend, Bev, and admiring her new greenhouse, while the dogs, hers and mine, played in her back yard. I had enjoyed our visit immensely. (So had the dogs.) So I was in a good mood as I clipped Zoee onto her lead and walked back down the road toward home. (Already, you can hear what’s coming, can’t you?) My next door neighbour was standing on the boulevard, just outside his gate as I walked past.

I knew he was uncomfortable with my being trans, but foolishly, I was determined to be as pleasant as I could be…polite, anyway. “Hi, Ben,” I said, expecting little more than silence (or perhaps a nod) in return.

What I got was just the sort of confrontation that for so many years, I had feared.

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I don’t just “believe” in love at first sight. I know it exists. And I know it lasts, too. I remember the doctor handing me our daughter moments after she was born. “It’s a girl,” she said. I’m not proud of this, but I’ll confess to it, anyway. There was a momentary flicker of disappointment, but it lasted only a moment…not even a second. I know because it takes about a second to say “one thousand.” The flicker didn’t last that long. I remember feeling the warmth of her body in my arms and realizing that this just felt so right. I remember looking down at her face, her lips, (Heart-shaped!) her eyelashes, (They curled!) and at her fingers, perfect even to the tiny fingernails. Who could imagine falling in love with fingernails? But I did. And it took less than a second.

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I’ve been shopping for baby clothes! No, not for a grandchild. That’s not going to happen in the foreseeable future, but it’s almost as good. I am on the verge of becoming an adopted grandmother (if there is such a thing.)

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Jane Austen famously opened her novel, Pride and Prejudice with the line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” There are other truths universally acknowledged as well, some of them sadder ones. My “universally acknowledged” truth, as the title suggests, is the power that secrets have over our lives. They bring us into painful confrontation with with our true, though denied, selves; they teach us the paralysis of fear.

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I have two jobs that need to be done I’d like to have a transgendered indvidual do the work.
My wife is going on a mini vacation from Wed June 22 to June 27 and that is the time I’d like the work to be done (sorry for the short notice.

Job 1 is to restretch the carpet in the upstairs hall. It is quite bad in front of Joy’s room and loose in other places.

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