Caught in Transition (10 page)

The next day I went to the dealership and by a trick of fate I got the dealership’s owner looking after me. After we were able to bring him all our vehicles to look at, we ended up making an even trade
–
he got three of ours for two of his.
 

One day after work Sheelagh met me there to sign the papers. It was a warm day and I was waiting outside. She came across the parking lot in a blue top, and a blue fluffy maxi skirt looking very pretty. I knew it took a lot for her to come in and sign the papers because the last time she was there was before her transition. She hadn
’
t even been at the dealership in order to test drive her chosen car. I was the one who did the test drive for her.

We were treated well and she handled herself perfectly. We walked out of there two happy campers with new to us cars. No more pickup trucks for Sheelagh, she was now the proud owner of a sporty little Matrix.

Living

I should mention that during the past year I had been working at home in my studio. I was a stained glass artist trying to make a name for myself while making fun art. My
“
go to
”
place for thinking was my studio. I could go there and forget everything or to think things over. I work from home and Sheelagh worked at her job an hour away, five days a week. We enjoyed each other
’
s company and the ebb and
 
flow of life had settled into a nice routine. That routine was going to change because it was soon going to be our thirteenth wedding anniversary. We were going to celebrate it by spending the weekend in Kingston Ontario. It has always been a special place for us because we celebrated our tenth anniversary there back when Sheelagh was still Steve. Now we were going there as two women.

We left for Kingston on a Saturday, stopped and got some wine, and made it to our hotel overlooking the water for check in time. Our room had a balcony where we could sit outside and enjoy the day. The weekend was great, the sex was great and the hotel staff were wonderful. Being a female couple in the city and at the hotel wasn
’
t as weird or scary as I thought it would be, we felt like we fit right in. We have a deep love and understanding of each other that overrides most bumps along the way. Celebrating thirteen married years together and feeling right in our new relationship as two women was extra icing on the cake.

Our Social Orbits

We don
’
t have a wide circle of friends and mainly did outings together without others. I tended to go to St. Catharines at least once a month because that
’
s where I grew up and my family still lived there. Sheelagh grew up in Peterborough and her mom and dad had passed away. She does have contact with her half-sister and her niece but that
’
s pretty much it for the family she
’
s in contact with.
 

She had had two good friends from over twenty years ago. One stopped contact abruptly when he learned of Sheelagh’s transition, while the other person never faltered. I find it interesting how people can drop someone they
’
ve known for almost a lifetime due to a gender change. Sheelagh will always be the same good person but just looks and sounds differently. I
’
m glad some people are more open minded than others. I know Sheelagh felt hurt when she no longer heard from that person she
’
d called a friend for over twenty-five years.

Neighbour

We lived out in the countryside and we were quite isolated from both the city and the nearby houses. This was our choice so I guess the gender change wasn
’
t felt by many people besides our families.
 

I found it interesting though, when our next door neighbour invited me over for tea. She started asking me where my husband was. Her house was close enough to ours that she saw that there wasn’t a man cutting our large lawn anymore. She had noticed over the years that Steve drove a bright red Toyota truck, exactly like her brother’s and she hadn
’
t seen it, or Steve around. So at that point I told her that Steve was now Sheelagh and had sold the truck.
 

 
“
Oh that
’
s fine - live and let live,
”
she said, and then proceeded to talk to me about her recent trip abroad. I thought that went well.
 

Later when I was home I started second guessing myself about what I’d told her about Sheelagh. Maybe Sheelagh wouldn
’
t have wanted me to say anything to a neighbour? I felt mixed emotions with regard to this because I didn
’
t want to hurt my wife, but I also didn
’
t want to live a lie and tell lies to our neighbours. In the end when I told Sheelagh about it, she wasn
’
t terribly happy. She understood that I did it to maintain our integrity. We lived in a rural area and gossip like this would travel quickly. She was apprehensive about how other neighbours who heard this second hand news would react. It made her feel anxious, but it was important that we were true to ourselves and could hold our heads high regardless of anyone’s misgivings.

Sheela’s Orbit

Sheelagh was having her own challenges finding her place in the world. I asked her the following questions and recorded her answers.

ME: When you're with a group of women do you feel like you're more accepted in that group than before?
 

SHEELAGH: It kind of depends - if no one knows my past it's much easier. I'm comfortable there but not totally at ease. Women who know my past don't know what to do with me, they don't know how to relate to me because they're used to dealing with someone strictly female or male, they're not used to dealing with someone who has a history of both - they have no idea how that I fit into their world.
 

ME: Do you have transsexual friends?
 

SHEELAGH: No I don't. I have had some online friends but no one in real life.
 

ME: So do you feel alone?
 

SHEELAGH: Yes, I feel really isolated. I haven't found any transsexual people I understand or can relate to. I have male work friends and that's about it. So here I am.
 

ME: What online places did you find for transgendered individuals?
 

SHEELAGH: There's Laura’s Playground, Susans.org, and there's also Transgendered Canada. There are very few people who show up in the chat rooms who I wanted to get to know.
 

ME: Would it be easier for you to fit in if you lived in a bigger city as opposed to rural Ontario?
 

SHEELAGH: Fitting in - I don't know - the fitting in part probably affects being in a social group, but I don't feel like I'm being judged doing everyday errands around Cobourg. Work isn't a problem. Some parts of the world I might fit in better, but I don't think gay women have too hard of a time fitting in when compared to gay males. At the moment I can't really be optimistic about being myself. Just being a normal woman in a social setting, without being judged by people I know, as well as people I don't know. We’ll see how it goes.

Flat Chested Dilemma

The year Sheelagh celebrated her fifty-fifth birthday was her first as Sheelagh. She was happy and enjoyed her day. My family sent cards and my daughter dropped in with a surprise, so the day went by happily. All of the swelling from her facial reconstructive surgery had gone down, she
’
d found a wig that she liked, and discovered her love of style could be expressed well as a woman.
 

One thing that would come up now and again was how unhappy she was with her breast size. She had read and had hoped that the hormones she was taking would increase their size. The hormones seemed to help a little bit but not as much as she
’
d hoped for. She wore a bra stuffed with fibrefill to give her a more feminine body. Unfortunately, August in Ontario is hot and humid and she was not happy being so overheated all the time.
 

It was around the end of August she started talking about getting breast augmentation surgery. My goodness, when I heard that I immediately flashed back in time to Chicago and all the blood and bruises. I didn
’
t think I could go through that again and that
’
s when I just shut down and said, “No we are not doing this.”
 
I couldn
’
t do it. All the waiting during the surgery, hoping she would come out of the general anesthetic okay, seeing her in pain and having to be the nurse who makes it all better. I couldn
’
t even think about it. I wanted no part of it.

Over the next few months I knew she was spending time researching doctors on the Internet but it was something we didn
’
t talk about. She knew if she mentioned it I would give her a hard time about it, and looking back she was correct. At that time I thought she was just wasting money and being selfish. I didn
’
t mind her breasts being small so why did she have to make them bigger. Who was she trying to impress?
 

She believed that because she was so tall she had to have bigger breasts in order to be seen as a woman by the outside world. She was being misgendered on a regular basis usually by short people. The pain of being called Sir after having endured the difficulties and pains in order to get where she was in transition was intense and humiliating. Undergoing more pain to avoid being misgendered seemed to her to be a fair trade, even though she knew it wasn
’
t going to be just the pain of surgery, but also having to live with the turmoil this would create in our relationship.
 

I didn
’
t agree with her. I said that
’
s why you can use a padded bra and never have to experience sagging breasts. That
’
s when Sheelagh lost it. Sheelagh rarely raises her voice but she did and said,
“
Do you have any bloody idea how hot a padded bra is in the summer?
”
With tears in her eyes she threw it at me and said, “You wear it and see how you like it.
”
It was then, at that moment, I knew she was going to have the surgery no matter what I said or how badly I didn
’
t want her to.

New Mexico
 

We were looking forward to October because we were going on a two week holiday. We left on a Saturday for New Mexico. We had never been there before and we both had always wanted to go. We landed in Albuquerque, rented a car and then were off to Santa Fe. By this point I was used to dealing with car rental agents, so I was no longer fazed by dealing with them. We found the Turquoise Trail and followed it up to Santa Fe. We enjoyed the old town, it was quaint and pretty and packed with people; that being said no one paid any attention to us. One of the fun things we discovered there were agave margaritas. These packed a punch and tasted delicious.

The next day we took the high road to Taos which was a scenic highway instead of the freeway. Taos is a small village with funky stores and artists with galleries – all very open minded and welcoming.

Another town nearby was called Arroyo Seco and they had a very cool mercantile store. We had fun finding some souvenirs and when we headed back to our car, two men in a truck slowed right down and whistled at us and called out. This was unsettling since we were basically in the middle of nowhere in northern New Mexico, and so we ignored them and hurried to our car and locked the doors. Definitely unsettling.

At Taos we stayed for three days at a bed and breakfast and it was interesting that the owners were LGBT friendly but the other guests not so much. For two of the three days we had interesting conversations with another couple until they left. On the third day we were ignored by the other heterosexual couples that were present. Since we were the only gay couple present it was pretty apparent that they
“
didn
’
t like our kind
”
so I was glad that was our last day there. I used to enjoy B&B
’
s but now the anonymity a hotel holds seemed to work better for us.
 

We made our way across the broad deserts of New Mexico and Arizona to Winslow and had a lovely stay at La Posada hotel. This was our second time there and it was fun to sit and watch the trains go by. The next day we headed to Sedona where we had rented a house for the week. Sedona is a cool, laid back town full of interesting people and vortexes. We had a wonderful time exploring and shopping and enjoying each other
’
s company. We had such a lovely time we were sad when it was time to go home.
 

We were back home for a week and then I left to go to St. Catharines because it was my mother
’
s ninety-first birthday and I wanted to be there in case it was her last one. Mom was in good spirits and enjoyed her day. The next day I headed back home and Sissy came with me for a visit like she often did. Sissy and Sheelagh are two people who get along extremely well as I have mentioned. Sometimes I think they both came from the same mother ship because the two of them can sit and talk for hours over a few bottles of wine. Sissy’s love and support of Sheelagh has only deepened over time. The time they spend together is never strained, and it made my heart happy that Sheelagh was comfortable and at peace when chatting with Sissy. After three or four days my brother-in-law would drive up and pick up my sister and they would drive back to St. Catharines.