Cousins and aunties…

Man, today, it is hotter than a motherfucker. The temperature soared to 40° or 104 F, and  we still had to go out in that sizzle-shizzle. I forgot my sunglasses, so I was mewling and hissing at the sun and running for shadows to hide in.

Before I head back for a different kind of trip down memory lane, I want to mention that last night, I practiced guitar for a bit, and that today I've started a new novel to conclude the vampire coven series for season one and move Vicky and Amber into their new places for season 2. This book will also mark the formal introduction of Exodus, the Southern Baptist vampire hunters. From this, you can infer bad things are about to happen in the series for someone of fanged persuasion.

But so today, I want to talk about some relatives who DIDN'T make my life a living hell. It's true that after a certain point, I didn't feel like I could trust them, either. But that wasn't anything they did. Instead it was me developing uber-paranioa because of other relatives and friends treating me like crap.

But my aunt Lisa and my cousins Annie and Terri let me play with their dolls, and they didn't act like I was weird for being different. My aunt Lisa had a HUGE collection of doll clothes because she made them herself. So her dolls put on a lot of random strip shows as I went through all the outfits. I remember complaining about Barbie's legs not having proper knees, because how could she walk? And when I moved her legs to make her walk, she swayed like a drunk uncle. (I had two of those, one on either side of the family.)

And my cousin Terri…there was never a time when I didn't enjoy hanging with her. We might just go climb a tree and stain our fingers eating berries, or get in trouble for smoking bits of rotted wood to imitate our parents. (Who were major proponents of the "do as I say, not as I do" school of parenting.) We made mud pies with Sprite to see if it would improve the taste. Or we rode bikes and rambled about cartoons and other goofy stuff.

Then there was my aunt Brenda, lover of bicycles and libraries. She is one of several women to instill this love of reading in me, but Brenda deserves special mention because she was the one who told me to question everything, to take nothing at face value. She was one of the first to offer her complete support when she found out about my transition, but then the same was true of Terri, of Annie, and my Aunt Lisa.

And I was not really surprised by their support. Their love has never felt conditional to me being good or acting right.

So when I look back through my memories, and there's a ton of crap to sort through, every once in a while I run across a moment of happiness, like an island of tranquility in an ocean of stormy waters. Any good qualities I posses, I gained in emulating these women and girls as I grew up. I can say that while there is a lot of shitty things about Texas, the native women have usually treated me as an ally in misery, and we all celebrate our lot with typical gallows humor.

So yeah, not everyone in Texas sucks. Just FYI.