Remembering and Forgetting Posted November 24, 2008
I received a letter on Saturday from a distant friend who was hurt and angry. She reads here a lot, she says. But never comments, except in letters to me that I normally choose to keep within myself. Sometimes she helps me to find the inspiration for another piece. Sometimes she simply says nice things and then we exchange letters about some aspect of writing or thoughts that flow from the writings themselves.
Saturday she was ... angry? ... thoughtful? ... sad? Perhaps all three, for she characterized her long missive as a "rant." Yet, as is her way, the letter didn't simply partake of a "rant." Instead it summed her recent life and thoughts. It summed in some very definable ways this person I've come to know. She' a person with a huge heart and much resolve who refuses to simply do what would probably be easiest for her: withdraw into a life gauzed from the inquiring queries of people who would have no reason to ever imagine that she was once designated "male." — Another bit of evidence, I imagine, that a cursory examination of the genitalia of a cheese-strewn baby lifted wet and a bit bloody from the birth-canal can be a most uncertain way of designating sex.
