Fairfax, VA, USA. Men have always been stronger than I am. Now, even more so. My upper body strength has never been a strong point.

When I was young, the difference in muscle mass was not as noticeable but boy who were my age generally were still stronger than I was. I was twelve when I learned to play baseball on reflex and bat speed rather than brute force. At the plate, a good set of wrists is worth any number of bulging biceps. Hand-eye coordination is everything.


Now if I only had leg speed. But you can’t miss what you never really had. Polio stripped me of speed before I was even old enough to even know what it might be. That’s life. I used to cover for my muscle weakness. The easiest way to avoid getting beat up by bullies is to project a sense of confidence, even when you are scared to death.

I couldn’t run away. I wasn’t strong enough to out wrestle them but I could and did out quick them. A straight right hand works wonders if you know how to get your body behind it. Fast reflexes also enable you to duck and block attacks and move your head out of the way if something is hurled at you. I learned never to put myself in a position that I didn’t know a good escape route from.

I skipped cutting through alleys and when I saw a gang of kids approaching me from the other side of the park, I went the other way. I distinctly remember being on the steps leading towards the nun’s convent with a taller boy telling me to come down from the steps so he could thrash me while his two friends ensured who the winner of any fight would be. I didn’t move a muscle and eventually the three of them left without me having to knock on the convent door.

I used to have a stutter. I still have one if I let my mind get too far ahead of my tongue. A stuttering child is a target for other children and soon learns either not to stutter or not to talk when other children who are present who might make fun of them.

Then there is my very curly hair. The large brown eyes and the dimples that appear when I smile. When I was one or two, strangers would remark unasked what a pretty little girl I was. I discovered early that a smile and dimples on good looking child can gain her entry to a lot of door that might otherwise be closed.

I feel contractually required to state that rumors of my family’s Mafia connections were unfounded; my uncle was not then and never had been a member of the Italian Mob.

Back then, simply being Sicilian was often enough to generate rumors of Family involvement.Oddly, those who might wish to bruise me were not impressed by my dimples. In my teenage years they were much more impressed with the rumor that my uncle was a connected Mafioso. To the best of my knowledge, the rumor wasn’t true, but hey, use whatever works to get you through the night and stay safe.

I like to get and stay safe.

My grandfather lived to be 102 and gave me his quick Sicilian temper, wich Grandma said he gradually lost his as he matured. She should have known: they were married for 65 years. They were better at marriage than I was but then I have my reasons. Meantime, Grandma taught be how to make pizza, tomato sauce, ravioli, cannoli, and the role of anchovies in the Palermo diet. Drink wine with family dinners. Hold large extended family gatherings on the holidays.

I lost my temper when I transitioned. Perhaps it’s the same process. Grandpa was much calmer when he finally finished growing up and so was I. However, I don’t think he needed an operation to make things right.

If the world had been other than the one we found ourselves, they would have celebrated my bridal day at a wedding mass and watched my husband and I dance as the music played. I would have given them many great-grandchildren but it was not to be. Perhaps another time if the Universe so wills it.

Some nights I cry for my missing babies, but I could not be other than I was born. I accept what never was.

And where once I was concerned with those guys who were considerably stronger than I was, I now find a strong, virile man really quite attractive. With men who once I would have avoided, I find myself flirting. If I were decades younger and unattached, I could well exercise my smile and dimples and see what the morrow might bring.

Love is not that common these days and a missed opportunity is still missed many years later. If you fixate on the could-have-beens, you surely will go crazy if you aren't already. All you or me or any of us can do is make the best choices possible given the available alternatives and information — and watch the dealer's eyes as you patiently wait for the luck of the draw.

Besides, someone did enter my life, upset all of my calculations, and I could not be happier. All does not always go so well in this world rumored to be the best of all those possible, the only world so far on which we briefly pass. You seldom get a second chance.

But then there is Sex Reassignment Surgery, a second chance to, if not make the world entirely right, at least make it better than the one you were born into. A few dozen years from now, male to female SRS will include implantation of a uterus and ovaries grown from the patient’s own stem cells.

I might be around to see that bit of science become everyday reality, but of not it still only a matter of time until it will be common place. Then, if I should pass this way again in whatever physical configuration at birth is provided me, I will have my babies.

All of them.

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