Michelle Paquette

I’m Trans. I’m Human. I’m a Weird Old Lady.

A response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt: I’m LGBTQ, but You Don’t Know THIS About Me.

Originally Published in
Prism & Pen
Jan 25, 2022

A very full wordrobe of women’s clothing. — Photo by Michelle Paquette

My wardrobe has entirely too many dresses, and I need to do something about all the shoes. All just suburban girl problems, which would be nothing really, but for an accident of birth.

You see, when I was born, the doctor told my folks they had a healthy baby boy. He was wrong, of course, but the mistake was understandable. Still, that little technical oversight makes me a transgender person, with a gender identity that doesn’t match what Mom and Dad were told.

Does knowing that I am a transgender person mean that you now know everything about me? That one little word hardly describes my life and how I live it. I would have to say it is almost irrelevant to my daily life. Take Thursday, for example…

I woke up about 8:30 in the morning, in bed with my wife and three cats. The cats were very well-rested, no doubt recovered already from walking back and forth across us at about four in the morning. My wife and I were a bit groggy but started our day with a kiss. I propped myself up in bed while she went into the hall to fetch our morning coffees.

Coffees in hand, we both sat in bed, poking at our gadgets. This is a bit of a morning ritual for our life as retired folks. I checked my mail and found I had a new request to deliver a presentation on “Magnetic Loop Antennas” via Zoom to an amateur radio club meeting in Northern California. I checked my calendar, and penciled in the date, sending an acknowledgment back to the club’s scheduling person.

We flipped through the news, and Laurie shared a few funny posts on Facebook with me. I don’t do Facebook anymore, as someone went through and reported dozens of my old posts, resulting in a ban on my account. So it goes.

I got a second cup of coffee for the two of us, and while my wife sipped hers, I put on my exercise clothes and headed downstairs for a light breakfast with my coffee, half of a homemade bran muffin, and my morning workout. I try to do about 45 minutes a day on an elliptical trainer, something I have kept up for about 15 years now. I found it was easier on the knees and ankles than jogging, and more practical considering the weather here in the Pacific Northwest.

After my workout, I toweled off and changed to old denim jeans and a sweater. I’ve been upgrading a storage space, our garage attic, to be usable as a workroom. That has meant insulating the space and putting up interior walls and the ceiling, all meeting the local building code. I’m nearly done, with walls and a shiplap sloping ceiling in place, and am preparing to put in flooring.

Today’s project is to make baseboard moulding, using several lengths of leftover shiplap board. I set up the table saw to cut 2 3/8” strips from the boards after trimming off one side. I then set up the table router to first smooth the rough cuts on the strips, and then switched to a Roman ogee bit to shape the upper edge of each strip, with a result that looks similar to classic “Coronado” moulding in a 2 1/4” height.

My wife takes a break from her day and helps me with cleaning out the work area, moving remaining lumber and moulding pieces to the garage, and I clear away the sawdust with the shop vacuum. I’ll still need to do a little prep work, and then I can put in the flooring.

My wife, her sister who lives with us, and I have a family dinner every night, sitting down at the table together. I’m cooking tonight, like most nights, and leave work in that room behind to start dinner. Tonight I’ll be preparing meatloaf, butternut squash, cream biscuits with sausage gravy, along with a spinach and romaine salad with citrus dressing. I generally prepare everything from scratch, as I find it tastes better, and can be healthier for us. I also find cooking and baking to be very enjoyable activities.

We sit down to dinner at about six in the evening and chat about the news, goofy events, politics, and other irrational human behaviors. My sister-in-law tells a funny story about the hummingbirds that visit the feeder outside her window, engaging in a territorial battle over the sugar water that helps them get through the winter.

After dinner, my wife did the cleanup, following the long-standing policy of “I cooked, you clean” we operate under. While she did the cleanup, I put the first coat of paint on the new moulding, and then it was my turn to clean up a bit, removing the paint from my brush and my hands. We kicked back to relax with a little dessert my wife put together, ice cream with toppings, and watched an episode of “The Expanse” on TV. Finally, we did our evening ablutions, and teeth brushed, headed to bed.

Did anything about being transgender inform you about my day, my skills, or any other aspects of my life? Did that one little adjective tell you much of anything about me?

I do have too many dresses and shoes, things I once wore in daily life before daily life became all about social distancing and sheltering in place. I considered myself to be high femme in my presentation at one point, but now, on days where travel can be limited to wandering between bedroom, kitchen, and living room, soft old denim, and comfy sweaters dominate my daily wear.

My therapist once asked me, very early in my transition, what I expected to be when I reached the other side of the transition. I told her that I expected to be a weird old lady.

Goal achieved!