Don't let your schooling interfere with your education.
~ Pete Seeger

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Happy Birthday, Jenny!

Today is my sister Jenny’s birthday, and I wish her the very best.

Jenny is a very special person. She started to teach me to read before I went to school. I remember sitting with her up in the treehouse my siblings and I build ourselves, poring over easy reader books as she explained.

I used to play with dolls with her in the back of our old ’63 Chevy Carryall while traveling to visit a friend outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming. I had so much fun, but even so, I made sure to downplay it, in case anyone thought I was getting too girly.

She was my protector in grade school. She watched out for me, perhaps more than I realize, because when she went on to Junior High, and I was the only one of my siblings left, I had a miserable time. More miserable than usual, that is – with all the other kids ganging up on me in the playground.

A lot of time has passed since then. Most of Jenny’s kids are grown up. Her daughter has a daughter. Jenny’s a grandma. I’m no longer her little brother; now I’m her little sister. And she’s still really special to me.

Happy birthday, Jenny!

No comments:

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
~Helen Keller

Reading List for Information about Transpeople

  • Becoming a Visible Man, by Jamison Green
  • Conundrum, by Jan Morris
  • Gender Outlaw, by Kate Bornstein
  • My Husband Betty, by Helen Boyd
  • Right Side Out, by Annah Moore
  • She's Not There, by Jennifer Boylan
  • The Riddle of Gender, by Deborah Rudacille
  • Trans Liberation, by Leslie Feinberg
  • Transgender Emergence, by Arlene Istar Lev
  • Transgender Warriors, by Leslie Feinberg
  • Transition and Beyond, by Reid Vanderburgh
  • True Selves, by Mildred Brown
  • What Becomes You, by Aaron Link Raz and Hilda Raz
  • Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano

I have come into this world to see this:
the sword drop from men's hands even at the height
of their arc of anger
because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound
and it is His - the Christ's, our
Beloved's.
~Hafiz