The true value of transition is the sisterhood

Life’s a funny old bird.  A friend asked yesterday what was the most unexpected thing about my transition.  I guess that she meant surgical, physical, emotional, but also metaphysical and spiritual, sexual.  I didn’t ask and was momentarily stumped by the question.   Which is a bit ridiculous given that this site is more or less a paean to the transformation of stepping into the self.

My answer was “friendships with women”.  It came after what seemed like a long-time thinking but was in reality no more than 2 seconds. 

“What?  Deeper, more complex?”

“Yes, in ways that are hard to describe.”

“That’s what every woman says is the best part of being a woman.”

I found that curiously affirming.  Affirmation, however, is something I need less and less of.  As in “need”.  I like it.  I will always like it.

I have been bopping around the Salone del Mobile with a client, with a friend, with a child, mine—all on different occasions.  With different experiences.

My child had just returned home but we had been invited to a party by a designer friend, so we went.  Even though the canapes were delicious, my child was feeling peckish after.  Never mind that there was a pretty inviting place across the street where we could have a nice plate of pasta—and we didn’t need to move the car.  But such is my/our food love that we chose a place a short drive away—it looked fabulous and inviting.

The warm, soft glow of the lights as we drove past once, then twice, looking for parking, before parking illegally on the curb and in the cross walk next to a gaggle of police who had bigger things to worry about—some kind of violent altercation, was very inviting, casting a gentle invitation out into the street.  It looked as we passed that there was space, but as we approach on foot, that the place was full became evident.

We went in, and the perplexed and old puppy look of a man who had been standing there, presiding over his 5 table restaurant for 40 years, slightly jowelly, a bit unshaven, eyes which drooped and sparkled at the same time.

“We’re full,” he apologized as he polished a demi-tasse.

“Not even that table over there?”  I asked indicating one over my left shoulder.

“Not even that table over there,” he replied indicating another one over my right shoulder.  “I can’t do that to my clients,” he said.  The whole place was tables of four, but there were two couples, so it created the illusion that there was space. Now, had I been at one of those two tables, at some point I would have invited us in, had I known what was going on.

Perhaps they were having romantic evenings.  Indeed they were.  But what is more romantic than taking in a couple of strays?

“Maybe if we wait?” I ventured.

“I only do one seating,” he said.  “I’m so sorry, I would love for you to eat here.”  He was genuine.

“We could stand at the bar…” I suggested.

“I can’t (non posso),” he smiled.

“We could eat in the kitchen.”

“I can’t.  There’s no room.”  The cook peaked out and took us in.  She called out for the owner, service continued.  They were just two.

He suggested we try a place up the street that I had noticed.  It was actually a fairly well-reputed place, but you know how it is when a vibe matters as much as the food they put in front of you.

We chatted for a while.  Then he asked us to go into the kitchen, to have a look.  We peaked our heads in.  The cook, a woman, said, “I’m so shy.  But I have to say, that the two of you are each more beautiful than the other.”  She melted me.

“This is my child,” I said putting my arms around them.

“I know,” she said, “it is plain to see.”

“Thank you that is so kind.”

“I just had to tell you that, but I couldn’t out there.”

“Thank you.”

We talked some more with the owner.  And then we were hands on the door on the way out, having said our goodbyes, and he said, “Wait. Come back.”  My child marvelled later at how close a call it was.

“Can I offer a glass of wine?”

“Oh,” I said.

“Bubbles?”

“Red.”

And so he opened a bottle and poured us each glass, and we settled into conversation.  Good talk requires good cheese, and so a wheel of cured sheep and goat cheese was brought out.  He had cut one side off, making a lid, and dug into the softer interior with a spoon, breaking jagged pieces off.   He pulled out a basket of Sardinian bread, Carta di Musica it’s called…do you know it?   So named as it resembles vellum sheets from the old days.

Afterwards, I told my child that what had happened was what happens to witches in the flow.  They are just discovering that they too are a witch.  And I am teaching them to listen, to see.  The “head” of my coven…it sounds so unglamourous and is probably not the right word, comes back to this lesson all the time, for all of the training, the practical aspects of witchery, are contained in that sentiment—to be able to see what is really going on, to see energy, to sync with it, to step into it, to harness it.

There are many kinds of witches.  Power, if it be such, manifests in many ways.  Being a white witch is not a powerful thing in a conventional sense.  I cannot and do not look into the future, spell-cast for specific outcomes, harm, fortune tell.  This is all dark magic.  And thankfully, despite the occasional temptation, I am incapable.  Something happens when I feel that it would be nice to do something dark.  It just doesn’t work.

But this kind of magic?  A free dinner, for we didn’t need to go out anymore.  We made a friend.  The evening took on the most glorious shape, the kind that makes life so delicious and lovable.

This gentle connection with the universe is a byproduct of transition.  Before puberty I felt the pulls of witchy power very strongly.  But it went silent for many, many years, until this path, and letting my true nature come forth.

My power lay in the feminine.  It always has, and only by listening to it, could it come back.

I was out with a dear friend and SW colleague who moonlights in the vanilla world too.  And she asked me a profoundly perceptive question in the way that only people on the spectrum are capable of.

“Do you think that you want to be a provider because it’s the friendships with other providers?”

“Yes,” I answered without hesitation.  “Even the providers I see as a client have become friends, and that is the most delicious thing of all.”

It’s funny that the provider who opened this path for me, or helped me to open it for myself, was the one who categorically refused this line of development, which was the very thing that led to the dissolution of our connection.  And why is that?  Because someone who won’t be a friend is not worth a moment’s notice.  And the knots you have to tie yourself into trying to have an emotional connection with someone who won’t like you at all, or allow themselves to do so, requires a kind of erasure of the self.  No thank you.

Two questions on the same topic in 48 hours.  And I had been reflecting on this.  I joked with a mover helping me move house, “had I known that women would like me more as a trans woman, I would have transitioned a lot sooner.”  And while I don’t know that’s true, so much of the fear would have been gone.

There is something so sublime about the gentle connection which can arise between women.  Fear is gone, curiosity takes its place, and there is a tenderness and complexity which brings us together.

I said to my friend who started this meander, “it makes it all worth it.”  The ‘all’ in this case is the loss of 2/3rds of the world as a safe place for me to go, the near daily instances of bigotry I face, the constant presence of discrimination. But these things make me stronger, make me more beautiful, make me more me.

I am so afraid of dying, of slipping away, of meaning and having been nothing.   There is always tomorrow, right?  But these words, these are my today.  They are a direct connection with me, with my life force.  The expression of them is what keeps me alive.   To know that there is still something to say.