#3y

My grandmother Janet is 96 years old. The last time I visited, while drinking the traditional after-dinner gin and tonics, we got to talking about the treasures lying around her house. Somehow we settled on a particular needlepoint hanging on the wall.

She asked: Who made that one, does it say?

And I said: It says "Deedee".

And she laughed: I didn't remember making that one!

My brain wasn't working as fast as my tongue that night— perhaps on account of the gin— and I said: Wait, who is Deedee?

She laughed again, and explained. It was what her parents called her, and the name that she used until she went to high school. All her best friends, everyone who knew her from back in the day, they still call her Deedee.

And then she said to me: You know, Janet is not my real name either. Nobody calls me by my real name, because nobody alive remembers it. And I'm not telling anyone now. It is just for me.

iii,

I was studying abroad in Budapest when I received a facebook message from Rob. A friend, not quite 21, from college back home, saying: I have a secret to tell you, but I do not want anyone else to know. I don't even want to write it here.

I replied, Here is my address. Write it down and mail it to me. I will read it, and then I will burn it; and he agreed.

I left the house, went all the way to the end of the metro, found a convenience store, bought a pack of matches, and sat down in the nearby park.

The three sentences at the start of the letter were: I am transgender. I am a man. My name is not [what we once called him], it is Rob.

This much is no longer a secret, but the three pages that followed are not my stories to tell.

(Have you ever tried to burn a letter? With a match. It is harder than you’d think.)

It is common now for a trans person to refer to their "old" name, the one assigned to them that they no longer use, as their deadname. Rob did not use this language in the letter, probably only because he did not know it yet.

Some of the debris from the letter made it into a trash can. But most blew away into the Hungarian landscape, white flecks scattered in the wind.

ii,

I set my father into the ground in October. He would have been 71.

It was a whirlwind of a weekend, of a week, really. Gatherings every night, friends and family buzzing in the house all day, as if the collective strength of so many silent prayers might summon him, Christ-like, into our midst.

Flying was my dad's first love. I was born near the end of his distinguished career as a fighter pilot in the Air Force. He continued flying, commercially, for as long as I lived under his roof.

A fighter's call sign is what the other fighters call them over the radio when flying together. Pragmatically it is a mask for when enemies intercept communication. But to the squadron, there is nothing secret about this identity; it is more a name than their name is. My dad's call sign is— was— Bear. At the memorial gathering, that was the name that rang long after sundown, that echoed in the still desert air. 

Bear was rowdy, gregarious, and virile. Stories about his after-work antics sprang readily to the lips of the guests. Boozy, shirtless memories of he and his fighter friends, boys who aged but never grew up. And then, after the laughs and a moment's pause, they would add sincere praise about Bear the professional. Thoughtful. Whip-smart. Straightforward. Generous. Passionate.

This man they described was familiar enough, but deeply unrecognizable. He bore little resemblance to the temperamental and stern authority of my childhood memories. Even less to the man I knew on equal footing, after several medical emergencies brought an early and unceremonious end to a lifetime in the cockpit.

I would have liked Bear, I think, but I never met him— I knew him too late.

i,

There are many stories to tell of my father, the man-who-was-not-Bear. I never know which one to start with.

I once asked my mom if I could paint my nails red. I don't remember my mother wearing colored nail polish, it must have been a neighbor who I saw, and the idea enchanted me. And yet somehow, there was the bottle, right underneath the phone. It would have been so easy. But mom said no, dad would be furious. And we both knew that was the end of that.

I liked my hair long. My parents did not. They tolerated it, in the way that one tolerates such inconsequential teenage lashings-out. But the frequency of snide remarks would increase in proportion with its length, and roughly every 6 months I would give in.

(When I was older, I discovered that my hair actually would not get much longer than that. After about 9 months, I shed.)

And if I could see you, I would see these stories fall lighter on your brow than on they lay on my psyche. And I would be suddenly tempted to strike cheap, to scowl forty-five and let sympathy roll in. But it’s too… it’s dehumanizing, and it’s not even narratively right— it doesn’t describe the heft of the uncertainty he left me with, any more than a dumbbell thrown at your face conveys the weight of a blanket.

The household I grew up in was reductivist when not mechanistic, and my childhood gave but scant framework to understand the impact of a thousand unremarkable moments. Still, human, I could not divert myself from the creation of my personal mythology, grasping at any explanation for those forces of parental nature. Nor from this private, shameful conclusion: that this love is, perhaps, conditional. Not necessarily. But the threat was there, and I, conflict-shy, colored inside the lines.

Dharys was 29 when my father died. Or maybe he was 2. (...let's not think too hard about that one.) In any case, my father never met Dharys, and for this alone I still grieve. In the dark I wonder if he ever had these feelings about Bear— this bridgeless chasm between us, etched in time. The quiet, tugging sadness that I would never know him as he was.

Perhaps he never could have, I reason, hopefully. Tieflings learn young, after all, how to hide. Perhaps Dharys can only live because not-Bear has died.

Or perhaps he knew me too early.

* * *

well... we were supposed to rent this with another person but they got into a car accident on the way (everyone is fine) so it ended up just being me and blitz.

i... have no idea what i'm doing lol. we mostly practiced startline stays and did a bit on the teeter as well, and then this little course i set up.

i really need to get my shit together and decide to commit to stopped contacts or running contacts. so sloppy and not clear right now and it's not helping blitzar.

hopefully next time i can rent this with two other people, blitz was VERY tired with us just having the whole hour.

Ci sono delle notizie che non vorresti mai ricevere, anche se il tempo passa inesorabilmente e con lui gli anni. Stamane ho ricevuto la notizia che Kirsti si è spenta il 30 agosto dall’amico Maury IZ1CRR, proprio colui che me parlò la prima volta nel 2006, quando ero costantemente alla ricerca di storie di YL da pubblicare su Radio Rivista. Quando Kirsti mi donò il suo libro “QRV a DXer’s Life…

Qualcuno una volta disse che non esiste una dolce vecchietta; che esistono solo vecchiette incallite e dispettose che in fondo sono ancora ragazze. Meglio così se il vecchietto è un radioamatore che insegue il DX nel vecchio stile del pile-up.Un ple-up non è la situazione adatta per diventare isterica. Bisogna essere forti, fisicamente e mentalmente per possedere la resistenza necessaria. E…

01.05.79, Serra n3 ZT - [ ... ] L'altra pianta, che supera il metro e mezzo e ha un tronco più solido, foglie ovali allungate e frutti che sono bacche raccolte in grappoli « questa è invece la pianta genio » e le bacche ci sono di vari colori. Blu, rosse, verdi « aiuta nella realizzazione di un determinato obiettivo, il cui campo dipende dal colore della bacca. Abbiamo concentrazione specifica in una materia scolastica, amore e determinazione » indicando rispettivamente un grappolo blu, uno rosso e uno verde « In entrambi i casi è necessario pensare intensamente al proprio desiderio, con chiarezza di particolari. » chiede, aggiungendo poi « Liberi di servirvi da subito » MS - ( ... ) A conclusione, accettando di non poter rimpicciolire del tutto, fa una conta mentalmente per poi ingerire la bacca rossa, con un po’ di incoerenza che si fa spazio. Tra i pensieri si focalizza in modo di nitido la figura della Davies, la Concasata di un anno più piccolo del suo, con le labbra stampate contro alle proprie mentre sono entrambi seduti sul letto del Mezzo-Gigante. Che tutto questo possa realizzarsi non è detto ma, da come stringe gli occhi il terzino, la volontà che questo si realizzi, nei suoi sogni, c’è tutta.

« Ti fidi di me? » Un sussurro, controllando non ci sia nessuno a guardarli così vicini, nel loro mondo. Uno sguardo veloce, prima di tornare lì, fisso in lei.

«Se dico che non mi fido rovino il momento?» mormora, premendo le labbra per non scoppiare a ridere in faccia a lui. Non ci riesce, ma cerca comunque di mantenere un certo contegno. «Mi fido di te» conferma poi, cercando di assestargli una leggerissima testata quando lui distoglie lo sguardo. «Oh, io mi preoccupo di rovinare il momento e tu guardi da un'altra parte?» guarda un po' te.