Christopher To Christina: An Answered Prayer

3. Reborn

The next day Mom came back from shopping with several bags.  She had obviously gotten more than just one dress. I was beside myself with excitement. 

THIS WAS IT!!! 

My escape was at hand. 

Sure enough, instead of taking the shopping bags into her room, as she would have ordinarily done, she took them all into my room, and we opened them there.

Little girls' panties (Mom thought I was still too young for a bra, but she did promise I could have a training bra for my next birthday and panties that weren't cotton), little white and pink ankle socks, a skirt, some blouses, another skirt, a yellow dress trimmed with white lace, a pair of sandals, and a pair of little black patient leather shoes with a single buckle across the top.

Slowly, my hands trembling with excitement, I put some of the things on. I chose the yellow dress for my debut. I already wore my hair fairly long, so Mom only had to comb it back and put a yellow ribbon in it. 

She said a girl my age shouldn't be concerned with wearing makeup yet, but she did put a little of what she said was mascara, on my lashes.

Finally she was done fussing over me, and I looked in the mirror. I thought I made a pretty convincing girl, as long as the person looking at me had never seen me as a boy.

Mom gave me a little kiss on the top of my head.

"My darling little girl," she exclaimed.

"Wait! I can't call you Christopher like this. That would never do. You need a new name. Have you thought about it?"

I hesitated.  Suddenly, "Giselle" seemed ludicrously exotic for the simple, pretty American girl I currently appeared to be.

"Well, come on, sweetheart.  Surely you've thought of a name for yourself.  You can't go on being Christopher."

I didn't have another name to fall back on.  Finally, my hands behind my back, my eyes downcast, in a tiny voice--a little girl's voice, if I had realized it--I whispered, "Giselle," and turned red as a beet.

One of the reasons I love Mom so much was that she never laughed at me. Even then, with this ridiculous answer, she didn't laugh.

"Oh, Dear, that's a, that's a lovely name," she said.  "If that's the name you want to take, then . . . we'll uh, we'll go with that."  She paused.

Her face scrunched up. 

"But you must remember," she continued, "you're an American girl, not a European one, and people might find you a little more . . .well, convincing, if you had a more common
American name."

"I know, Mom," I replied.  "Giselle was a dumb idea. Let me think about it some more." 

I had no idea what I would come up with.

"All right, you given it some thought. Have you come up with a name," Mom asked. 

"No, mom."

"Okay, for the time being, I'll just call you Christine, which is pretty close to Christopher.  And once you've settled on a name you want, we'll change it then. Deal?"

"It's a deal."

As it turned out, I stuck with Christine instead of trying to find a better one.  In fact, I was too busy being a girl to worry about details like names, so from that day, the 20th of July, I answered to Christine. 

Christopher Taylor had been born
on the 14th of December, but Christine was born on July 20, and from then on I thought of July 20 as my birthday.  That fact alone should have been enough to tell me this was going to be for keeps.

On my first full day as a girl, I woke up early, about six AM, and remembering what I was to do that day, I was too excited to go back to sleep again.

I hadn't felt anything like this since the times Sally put me in a dress when we played together. This, however, felt even more exciting than that because it was different. This wasn't going to be just playing, pretending to be a girl. This was real and I couldn't wait to get started.

I kept watching the clock as it inched toward seven, the usual time mom would come in and get me up.

I tried to wait for Mom, I really did, but by six thirty I was too excited and just couldn't wait any longer. I got up, took off my pajamas, and then began to look over the modest assortment of things Mom had bought me.

I had decisions to make.

Should I choose the pink panties, or the white ones? I labored over the decision, wanting my first day to be perfect.

What a luxury, what a delight to have the choice, actually to be allowed, and in fact expected, to put on panties.

After a bit of debate, I settled on a pink pair.

Today, as mom had explained, was to start a one month trial, to see how I liked living as a girl. But, as I put on the panties, I was pretty sure, I already knew.

Over the pink panties, I put on a light blue t-shirt and a short flared denim skirt I had picked out the night before. 

I put on a pair of ankle socks Mom had told me would go with the outfit and the white canvas shoes.  Then I climbed on the bed and looked at myself in the dresser mirror.

It seemed to me that I looked a little less convincing than I had the night before, which was a letdown, however, it was just then I realized this was the moment I had prayed for, and on a sudden impulse I hopped off the bed and dropped to my knees, and folded my hands.

"Thank you, God," I said. "Thank you, thank you, thank you for allowing me an escape from the miserable life i was living. I won't have to be bullied anymore like I was bwfore. This is the start of a brand new life. One that i know is going to be better. Thank you for answering my prayer."

Years later, a wonderful Jewish girl, who was my dearest friend at the time, would tell me that every orthodox Jewish man thanked God every day for having been born a man instead of a woman.

Now, that's something you'd never, ever catch me saying. It was only my first full day, but even still I was just as grateful for the opposite, not having to awaken every morning, any more, to find I am still a guy and discover being a girl was just a dream.