November 23, 2007

Thanksgiving + 1 (or Hi Everybody!)

Posted in thanksgiving, transgender at 6:06 pm by Michael

First off, if you are coming from the site from Valleywag, welcome, and thanks for coming. Honestly, since Owen posted this afternoon, the amount of traffic (more than 1k views) in five hours is the same as we’ve had in a week…

Not to suck up to Owen, but initially when he posted the article back in October, I was extremely nervous that I’d come out poorly – but he did a great job to understand what was going on, and posted a very thoughtful article. Today’s was an extension of that, and I sincerely appreciate the non-sensational aspect of it (except for the title 🙂 ).

Anyway, on to the regular show.

Waking up this morning, I was thinking, “This is my last Friday with this face.”. Every time Samwich grabs my nose, or smacks me on the face, I think about what that’s going to be like a week or a month from now. Is he still going to recognize me? Am I going to scare him for a while? Right now, one of the things that just warms me up from the very core is when I see him after being out for a while, and seeing a super huge smile, and seeing him crawl over as fast as he can. I can’t imagine what it would be like if that didn’t happen.

As planned, yesterday for Turkey day we had about twenty people – lots of friends, family – way too much food – but it was good times. Our friend Leslie (http://www.calmbyleslie.com/) , who’s a massage and aroma therapist in Sammamish brought us three custom essences – “Megan’s Scar Oil” and “Samwich Soother” and “Anh’s Calming Balm”… very sweet.

As people were leaving, I kind of lost it… its hard to explain, but seeing people “with this face” for the last time gets very emotional.

Over the past couple of days, friends have been calling and emailing, wishing me (and all of us) best wishes – a bunch we’ll see next week (they are coming to SFO to visit while we are down. Every call basically makes me weepy (yes, its hard), but its great to have the support.

This afternoon, we went out (me, Anh, Samwich and Peri and John) to go get our Christmas Tree – our adventure brought us from Seattle to Woodinville to Maltby to find the perfect tree. (Anh prefers the really sparse “Charlie Brown” kind – technically is an “Alpine Noble Fir” – and there’s only one guy who sells them – they aren’t farmed in general.)

The tree is up, lots of Anh’s family is over now, and life goes on.

Five more days with this face, and two more days being seen as Michael. Its surprisingly normal (but a little scary!) here on the precipice.

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