Happy Birthday, Angel

On August 14th, my mother delivered a baby into the world that God wanted to show it was different yet sensitive enough to help others in any way or form. From what I have learned my difference has given me so much happiness now as it had from the time I discovered that my life would be what I made of it. My mother watched over me, she guided and supported me to which I became the woman I am today. Living the life of two genders isn't easy by all means but it never slowed me down either.

My mother would worry all the time if I were to be found out, that while in high school she had me pulled from gym class and showering with other boys wasn't such a good idea my body was changing then and in a big way. Binding my breasts helped keep my chest flat. My mother would have said “Your fear is that somebody is going to hurt your child,” she said. “There is so much violence, and people are so threatened by [intersex] that they will kill you for being different sometimes. That was always her fear.” I learned to keep my mouth closed and ears open for my life would never be a frightening experience, not that I didn't have bad times in my life but I learned to forgive for all the wrongs in my life so I could be here today writing about it. Forty eight wonderful years have passed with another fifty more ahead to discover what it will be like as the woman.

August 14th may be my birthday though I look at it as something great that god gave me, he gave me my understanding of others, the sense of knowing what to say from the heart and how I have the ears to listen. He and my mother provided me with so many wonderful things to share with others. It isn't the woman in me it is the person who resides in this gender shell, whether I am a male or female, all in all I am me.

So today is a my birthday, a reminder that I have made it another year in this world. I have been reminded by my friends and family 200+ whether on the phone, emails, secondlife or facebook I am happy to be part of everyone's lives. So here's to another 50 years and by then I know I have earned my wings.

Remember when

This is for the man who brought me into this world whether he wanted a daughter or not, he is after all my father. This month he will be celebrating his 75th birthday with my brothers, sister, cousins, aunts and uncles. What a wonderful way to cherish 75 years, but he will not be celebrating it with his twin brother who passed on 5 years ago or his mother who passed 2 years ago. A man who was brought up on tobacco farm with a dirt floor in a cabin with 7 children. No he is in our hearts even though sometimes he can be an ass for not accepting me for me but I think it is finally sinking in that I am his oldest daughter and not the son he perceived.

Growing up was difficult in many ways that it taught me to stand up for myself never rely on anyone because you just don't know who will hurt you next and I can thank my father for that lesson. He taught me so much over the course of 40 years that has me here today typing out a remembered birthday wish to him. I remember fishing with my brothers and father eating spam from a can, exploring the waters in which we fished. Camping and roughing it, dealing with the bugs and snakes. Swimming in water so pure you could drink it as you swam in it, yes those were the good ole days. Before cell phones and electronic games, when a child used their imagination to build and play to all hours until my father would whistle and god forbid you didn't hear the that sound there would be hell to pay.
There were times my father would make us go outside with boxing gloves to settle an argument amongst us and since I was the sis in the family I would get beat up the most. I wasn't a fighter like my father wanted me to be, but he paid for it dearly when my brothers would get unruly and beat him up and anyone that got in their way. So the lesson learned there was never teach someone something that will bite you in the ass in the long run.

So on the 17th of June my father will be 75 years old, three quarters of a century that is quite a milestone. I will be lucky to make that age god usually takes the good people first and then the bad last, he took my mother when she reached 49 and she was the sweetest person in the world not because she was my mother just because of who she was. My father who was brought up in the older days was mean and he drank, he used to beat up my mom when I was a child. He hated her so much 30 years later he brings up the past and how he hated her for the things she did to him but never the beating he gave her.
Funny how I remember all those things and yet I can not remember what I had for dinner the night before.
Happy Birthday Dad, seventy five years is an awful long time to live and still many more years ahead because god doesn't want you and the devil is afraid you will take over.



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Now playing: Alan Jackson - Remember When
via FoxyTunes

Gift of tears

I am going to share something which I haven't shared since writing my book, it makes me cry horribly but it cleanses me as well. Which I really need sometimes and only she can do it.

My mother always said I was a special child, not only because of the difference that is inside my body because I love everyone. That I show love and I care about them, something few people actually do but I know a few, she would be proud that I found these people.

It was her and I against the whole world when she was alive, oh boy did we have the good times and the bad times too. She sang that song you and me against the world from Helen Reddy. I will tell you she was my hero, someone I looked up to. My mother, sure miss her so very much and not a day goes by that I don't think of her.

Be prepared, trust me when I say this, for as I reread it the tears began again but I wanted to share this one thing with my readers and friends. It isn't always about me, it is about everyone but she found her way here because I found her tape. (you'll understand later)

I was working for a auto parts store making $3.50 hour, going to college and sleeping in my car because I was too poor to afford a place of my own. I would visit my mom everyday while she was in the hospital, you see my mom had throat cancer so the doctors surgically extracted her larynx and left her with a hole instead but it lasted for about 18 months, during that time I took her home she didn't want to die in a hospital. This hospital was the very one I was born at but trust me I wouldn't want to die there either. I rewired that thing she used to talk like a robot, it was too quiet and she now sounded like a normal voice somewhat but it was better than a robot.
She loved it, mom always had the best I would see to it.

So I drove her home and waited on her, sat by her bed day and night this was after all my mother. She would ask where I was living and I would tell her a white lie, I never wanted her to worry about me. {excuse me a moment I have a crying spell here} She had enough to worry about and me to tell her the truth would send her over the edge. She lost her beautiful voice, but earlier in my life I recorded her talking actually scolding me and then talking, but it was to remember her always.

{excuse me again another crying spell here}Where was I?

Mom had to go back to the hospital, she wasn't eating right, so I was given some nasty liquid named ensure that she could keep her strength up. As the months went on it was work, mom, school, mom and I stayed with her then but she was getting worse. She wouldn't drink that ensure, so I would buy her shakes and put protein powder in it to keep her strength up. She was a smoker, she smoked till the day she died and she drank too, vodka, she said the pain was less so I let her do it. I didn't want her to be sick anymore, watching her suffer hurt me so much but there was nothing I could do to lessen the pain.

I ended up bringing her back to the hospital, god I hated that place.

It was in August, two weeks from my birthday I would be 23. Mom said to me she was dying, I would tell her no you are alright the doctors are doing all they can and she would say "listen honey, you have to understand I am dying". I just wouldn't listen to her, I didn't want to hear that, after all not only was she my mother she was my best friend too.


Mother had me sit close she wanted to tell me something, so I lean in close to her, she whispered "I have something for your birthday." I smiled and said you don't have to give me anything, I have you Mom that's all I want. Mom went on to say that what she was to give me something you couldn't find it in a store, you had to earn it and it will always be mine because it would never grow old or outdated. I couldn't understand what she was explaining to me, till much later.

Now I would visit her twice a day to be sure she was alright, I was told to stay home one day and rest and with that I did. I didn't like that much but she asked me to stay home and rest.

My younger brother came to my work the next morning, people were looking for me I asked what heavens for, he said something is wrong with mom.

How could that be I asked, I only took one day off, like she asked me to. He wanted to drive but I did instead, my younger brother stands 6'3 and is built like a building, when I said I will drive with the look in my eye he backed down. We were at the hospital in less than 5 minutes, a 20 minute drive.

As he and I approached the nursing station going to her room, 2 orderlies stood in my path, my brother said to them, not here that is our mother. I was allowed to pass without an incident. I walked into her room and there she laid blood on the wall, she had a terrible death, she had a cardiac arrest which the nurses hadn't even cleaned up but I didn't notice it till later, you see I thought she was sleeping and I got into the bed to hold her while she slept.

It was six days to my birthday and her dying was was my present.

{crying again sorry}

She didn't want to see me suffering and worrying about her no more, my mother wanted me to be happy and carry on and become the person we had always discussed which I am doing now.

When she laid in my arms I was rocking her just as she had when I was a baby, here was my mother asleep in my arms. My brother tried to get me to let go, and eventually I did but I don't remember that actually it took me three weeks to cry, I went into shock.

I wrote her eulogy just as she asked me to, which I still have somewhere.

The one thing she was so proud of me was I was good to people, not to pat myself on the back here, I would try to help anyone if I could and that very day when she died before I got there, I wanted nothing more than to see she was comfortable and her baby was there with her. You see I was momma's girl or boy, depends on who ever you talk to in the family.

I miss her so much, it has been 24 years since I seen her. I visit her urn every chance I get, sometimes more than ever just to be by her side and cleanses myself.

I believe it now when she said she would give me a gift like no other and you know what she did.


I love you too Mom.




*this took box of tissue and 8 hours to write and was worth every tear.