The Thanksgiving after I got changed from a male football player into a one-legged girl was the first time I would see much of my dad's side of the family since the accident. Most knew what had happened, but some didn't believe it. Sometimes, I had a hard time believing it myself.
Let me explain my story briefly: the previous summer, my aunt and I had gone out for a ride while I was dressed in a skirt and petticoat. As we were making a turn, we were struck by another vehicle and I had to be taken to the emergency room in women's clothes. My right leg and much of my pelvis were crushed, so the doctors, seeing the shape I was in and how I was dressed, made a few changes to my plumbing and turned me into a girl. They were unable to save my right leg, and in fact I was left with only a fleshy blob for a hip. I have no sensation in it, but I can walk with crutches. Lacking a hip, however, I must use a bag to defecate, though I can urinate normally. I cannot wear waisted garments, including pants, shorts, skirts, even underwear. I can literally only wear dresses—unless I put on a skirt held to a shirt or blouse with safety pins, which I have done a few times. Fortunately, I can control my bladder.
Dad was angry with my aunt for all of this, and had little sympathy for her, even though she lost a toe in the accident. I guess I can't blame him for being mad. I was concerned how his side of the family would react to my—well—changes. Aunt Ruth, for example, is a fundamentalist who threw a fit when her oldest daughter wore pantyhose. Grandma Stewart was not so fussy, but she never appeared in public in anything except a well-fitted skirt suit and a hat, even now in her late 70s.
Dad rented a small van for the trip. Even though we had a good car, it used a lot of gas, and I needed room to stretch out once we got going. It's hard traveling very far when you have only half a butt. The trip took about two hours, so we left early in the morning in order to give us time to get settled in and visit before dinner. I wore a long dress that looked like a blouse and skirt. On my left leg, I wore a knee-high nylon stocking, wool sock and a boot. Since Dad's family lived near the mountains, I knew it would be cold there, and had Mom buy me a thermal slip to help me stay warm, though it ended only a couple of inches below where a miniskirt would end. I wore another, longer cotton-nylon blend slip over it to better cover my leg, though I knew that no one was likely to actually see anything.
Most of our trip was made on a freeway, but after about an hour and a half of monotonous driving, we finally got onto a two-lane road and headed into the hills. Dad had grown up in this area, so he knew all of the sights—the "half-house," the old county jail (now a bed and breakfast), the stump which was used to locate all property in this part of the state—and proceeded to show them to us, although we had seen them many times before.
For an old family homestead, the house was rather small, but the smell of turkey baking and potatoes boiling and everything else going on helped to make us feel at home. I got my crutches and hobbled out of the van up the uneven steps to the back door (nobody ever used the front door). Before I could knock, Grandma—not wearing a suit but a granny dress and an apron—opened the door and said, "Well, I never thought I'd say this, but...you're very pretty!"
I blushed and said, "Thank you, Grandma. You look fine, too. How's Aunt Ruth?"
"I'll speak for myself, young—well, what do I call you?" said Aunt Ruth.
"Speak for yourself, will you? You don't even know what to call him—her! Her!" Grandma quickly corrected herself. She was so embarrassed, I thought she was going to faint—or kill Aunt Ruth.
I explained to both of them that I had not changed my name, as it was one that fit for both boys and girls.
"I guess we'll be using that name a lot, won't we?" said Grandma.
"That's fine with me," I said.
My cousin Gus and his girlfriend from college showed up around noon. Both were wore jeans that were full of holes. Grandma glared at them, but Aunt Ruth asked if they always stole their clothes from the homeless. The quarrel that erupted after that almost made everyone forget that I used to be a guy. Then Aunt Ruth decided to use me to make a point. Pointing at me, she told everyone that I, who used to be a boy, showed more fashion sense than Gus and his girlfriend combined. I rolled my eyes, but there was little I could do while Ruth got going on her diatribe.
I went out to the van and got my football jersey, which I sometimes wore over a dress to school. I put it on and asked some of my younger cousins if they had a football and wanted to play catch with me. One had a ball, and so we tossed it around while we waited for the quarrel to subside. "This happens every year Aunt Ruth is around," one of the cousins explained.
"I know," I said. "Even Grandma has heard it from her a few times."
"I wish Grandpa were still alive."
"So do I. But he
was a lot older than Grandma, and he lived to be almost 100."
"Dad says that if it weren't for Aunt Ruth, he'd still be alive."
"Well, they argued a lot, but I think that kept Grandpa going. He looked forward to the quarrels. Not like the rest of us, though."
Gus and his girlfriend came out and played catch with us. "So you were a football player?" she asked.
"Yep," I said, tossing her the ball.
"Quarterback?"
"No, I mainly played defense. I tried to break up passes. Caught a few, mainly by accident." I laughed. "I got turned into a girl by accident, too!" I laughed again.
After a while, Dad said, "Time to eat!" Things had settled down when we went in to have Thanksgiving dinner.
Gus and his girlfriend and I eventually became good friends, and I told them I wanted to be at their wedding. That created an argument, since he wanted me to be a bridesmaid and she wanted me to be his best man.
But that's another story.
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