Giving Thanks, 2020

I love Thanksgiving.  It has all the trappings of a celebratory holiday, food, good cheer, family, gratitude, all without the stress of Christmas.  This year, I celebrated a masked and social distanced Thanksgiving with my sister, my brother in law, my dear niece and nephew, and, of course, Maddie the dog.

It was a sunny Southern California day, and the morning entailed a walk in the park, late morning coffee, sweet biscuits, and languid conversation with my sister.  Late afternoon, we spent together in the kitchen, tag teaming a wonderful Thanksgiving feast, kibitzing on this and that and ruminating about the things sisters our age ruminate about.  At one point, my sister was down on the floor wiping up some small spill, and looking at her from my chair at the table, I told her I loved her.  I do.

My sister has been a bright spot in my transition.  Weirdly, and ironically, she was the sib I was most worried about telling when I decided to come out and live as Kay.  We had been pretty close over the years, but I wasn’t in her confidence the way I am now.  What was amazing about my sister was that her natural hunger for truth, and her love for me,  lead her to educate herself not only about what it means to be trans but also about what dysphoria means.  I recall her calling after she had attended a one-day seminar designed for family of trans folk and telling me, “I get it now.  This is real for you.  I understand now that this is something you have been managing for a long time.  I want you to know, I am here for you, and I will never turn my back on you.”  Of course, my heart soared, and I wept.  I wept tears of joy and relief and gratitude and hopefulness, and I wept for the feeling of freedom, of finally being able to live truthfully with the people I love the most.  So, yes, I am thankful.  I am thankful for the deep relationship we continue to build.  I am grateful for my sister recently saying to me that she looks forward to my retirement when she can walk with her sister on the beach.  I am thankful for the gift of those words, for the recognition, for the acceptance, for a vision of the future that embraces me as she.

Yesterday evening, we ate a socially distanced Thanksgiving dinner, outside on the patio, and my brother in law said grace; he prayed for loved ones and friends who needed healing, he prayed for guidance for our new president, and he prayed thanks for all the many blessings in our lives.  We delighted in the dinner my sister and I prepared, the beautiful, crock-pot, no fuss, no muss turkey breast, the homemade whole wheat honey dinner rolls, the sage dressing, the sumptuous potatoes and  gravy, the whole she-bang.  We complimented the food over and over, and we talked and ate.  Afterwards, my nephew, straight-faced throughout, brought us to tears of laughter, and it felt so good to laugh, to release so much pent up tension from the many months of COVID protocols, from the weariness of waiting for our 45^th president to let go of the power he so lustfully is grasping to, from all the heaviness of 2020.

I recently wrote a song, one in a series chronicling my transition and the coming to terms with the loss of my marriage, one that marks a readiness to open up to another, to call to love one more time.  I wanted to share this song with these people I love, and after desert—an apple pie of apple pies curtesy of my sis—my niece asked me if I would play it.  So, I got my beloved Martin and sat down to play.  Strangely, the first line of the song escaped me for a moment, and I had to laugh, for this is a song I play every day, a mantra for this phase of my transition, for this place in my life.  And then I remembered, and I sang: 

                        I turned up my eyes

                        To the darkening sky

                        And I counted the stars

                        Believing love never lies,

                                    Does it?

And I played, and I sang, and I closed my eyes, and the evening wind picked up as I played, and I could feel myself smile, could feel my hair swirling around my face, and I let go and let it out:

                        So I am holding the shore

                        And I am holding on tight

                        And I will open my door

                        And I will welcome the night

                        Now, I hear the old refrain,

                        Waiting for love again.

I am grateful for a family with whom I can open up and be vulnerable, with whom I can share these sacred words that call to a future that is only now, only dimly beginning to emerge.  I am grateful for my nephew’s sweet text later that night, and the words he shared: “Tonight I am so thankful for the song you wrote and for you singing it and for the wind that carried it.”

This is what it means to be blessed, and I am thankful for finally understanding what it means for the truth to set you free.

Kay out.