I just got back from spending the weekend with my great-aunt who is in her mid-80’s. It had been almost 20 years since I last saw her. She had said that she had some interesting family photos she thought I would like to look at after my grandmother told her how surprised I was to learn about my family’s Native American heritage and since it had been so long since I had seen my great aunt, my grandmother and I made the trip up to New Ulm, Texas.

My great-aunt had this to say about me being trans: “Well, folks is born that way. It happens to them before they are born. Anyone who thinks folks like you or just gay people choose this is just ignorant. People get upset because you are different is all. I’m okay with you because I am old and I’ve learned that being different is normal.” My mouth hit the floor. Then she went on to say… “What really makes me sad is when parents throw their kids like you away. You know, a lot of them think about suicide, you know. Its awful, just awful.” This… coming from someone I knew thought Regan was the best thing that could have happened to America! After hearing this, she went on to talk about how awful the war is. Now, at this point I scratched my head because she wasn’t sounding like the Christian Conservative I remembered. So, I asked her is she was a Democrat. She said, “No. I’m a Republican… well, I don’t know anymore. I am just so disappointed in ol’ George. I guess I’m more of a Democrat… or… I just don’t know…” I have to say that she sounds fairly progressive to me!

Anyway, she did well with pronouns until my grandmother began referring to me. My grandmother has issues when it comes to remembering much of anything and is easily confused. She has apologized to me more than a dozen times for getting my pronoun wrong. She points to he head and says, “Dern… I don’t know why I do that. I know you aren’t a boy, but I call you he… it just flies out my mouth…” Anyway, because my grandmother would call me he and him, my great-aunt began doing the same. For every 10th he or him, they would correct themselves… but I was okay with it all because it wasn’t done to hurt me, they are both just very old women : )

Here is a picture of my grandmother’s uncle as a child:

Here is a picture of the couple from the one-leg-lead-in-the-ear story:

This was taken on a reservation in Oklahoma.

Unfortunately, my great-aunt didn’t know the name of the reservation her father or mother came from. But I did learn all about my family’s long history of murder, attempted murder, alcoholism, poverty, wife-beating and philandering. Now thems is real ol’ time family values ^ ^