There are things I never learned in childhood. Things most girls learn from their mother, I guess. Many girls learn to cook from their mother. I didn’t. I taught myself, and if I dare say so, I’m really quite good.
 
 

Some girls learn how to do their nails and hair from their mother. Most girls get their first training bra while shopping with their mother, I imagine. They’re probably taken aside and told what being a proper young lady is all about.
 
 

I didn’t learn any of these things. I didn’t learn them from my mother because I was not her daughter. I was her son. Genetically speaking.
 
 

My sister is two years older than I am. When we were young, she and I played together. We played with her dolls or my toy cars. It didn’t matter. We lived in the country, without a lot of other children around. My two older brothers were so much older that they didn’t want my sister and I around them and their friends. So, she and I played together.
 
 

We shared a bedroom until she was ten, then she got her own, being the only girl. Genetically speaking. She dressed me up once, when I was only about four, I guess. I thought I looked good. My mom got very angry, and as it is with children at that age, I didn’t understand the problem.
 
 

I think my sister told me once that she wished she had a sister. By that time I understood part of me WAS her sister. I couldn’t even tell her. It had been engrained into me for so long the wrongness of this desire.
 
 

My parents were divorced before I was one year old. When I was in sixth grade, my Mother’s boyfriend, Don, forced me into junior league football. Football was, by his standards, THE defining attribute of manliness. I had won several awards that same year for writing, poetic writing particularly. He was not impressed. My showing in football ALSO did not impress him. There was only one child in my grade smaller than me. I was a tiny, meek, effeminate brain. I remember one of my teachers told me I was ‘sensative’. That did nothing but attract the school bullies.
 
 

My mother didn’t teach me how to handle this. I was a boy, and this was out of her provence of knowledge. I began building the defensive wall then, killing my feelings, living life in a numb state of half-living, which continued until I was nineteen.
 
 

I have re-emerged. I can feel now. I can love and laugh and grow. I’m not what people expect of me. I do not comfortably conform to a role this society commonly accepts, but I try not to punish myself for that. I’m learning the skills needed to express myself as I see fit, to show something delicate and pretty. There’s a skill boys certainly never learn! I’m trying very hard to simply accept who I am, without trying too hard to know exactly why. I hope that will come with growth.
 
 

Several years ago, I had my first outing. My nerves didn’t hold up well. I hope to do better this time. I also hope that you all will understand that I’m scared, inexperienced, self-conscious, and confused. Knowing all this, I hope you’ll all accept me with open arms into the family.
 
 

Oh, and I still need help with my hair.

Sep 98
 

Lynn