Diplomatically, Socially, and Congestedly Yours

My friend Nat put it better than I ever could.  "RM, you got slammed."

The past two weeks have demolished my personal myth of indestructible physical health.  On the evening of March 16 I had twelve people over, first for a Pride Month planning meeting and then for a Third Friday of the Month transgender support group.  That's more people than have ever been at my apartment for an LGBT evening.

It was all very gratifying until Monday.   I felt tired all day at work.  I thought that was it, that I was overtired, and almost apologetically I told the G-Man that I was feeling under the weather and perhaps should consider staying home the next day.  I wasn't even serious about it.

Then I woke up in the middle of the night with the worst sore throat I can remember in decades.  Swallowing was painful, and my voice was a whisper.  Twelve hours later I had no voice at all.  All the other usual cold symptoms soon came on and joined in a merry spring celebration in my head.

I missed three and a half days of work, in disbelief first that this was not going to pass in 24 hours, then not in 48, and then not even in 72.  My throat could take chicken noodle soup and soft boiled eggs but not much more than that.  I consumed more tea and honey than I have in years.  Our Embassy medical office sent medication home to me through a neighbor, and I went to work on Friday afternoon more for a medical evaluation than for work.  At least the sore throat had finally loosened its grip.

On Saturday my voice started to come back, and on Sunday I felt well enough to meet my Peace Corps friend PA for brunch.  This is her last week in Romania, and it would be the last chance to see each other.  After brunch we walked through one of Bucharest's beautiful downtown parks, the sun warm and an early summer feel in the air.  Could it have only been three weeks ago that snow drifts dominated the streets of Bucharest?

I went to bed gently that Sunday evening, certain I had turned the corner and that all would soon be well.

That feeling lasted until just short of midnight.  During 25 years of marriage, I became a light sleeper much like my mother had been.  Our young son would have the usual childhood illnesses and problems, and my spouse's two aunts and sister who lived with us had an assortment of ailments, some of them serious.  Suffice it to say that the rescue squad in our neighborhood knew us well through nighttime visits, sometimes more than once in a month.  I was primed for the slightest nighttime touch on the shoulder, the softest call from another room.  In a moment I would be bolt upright, leaping into action to address the crisis of the moment.

So there I was on Sunday evening, already two hours into sleep when I heard the sound and jumped out of bed.  It took a moment for me to realize it wasn't my telephone that had started ringing but the intercom telephone.  Someone was at the door outside, asking to come in.  In pajamas and a bathrobe, I opened the door to find my local friend NR standing there.  She was having a small personal crisis and had come to me, her trans sister, for a shoulder and a few words.  We sat, we talked.  It didn't take long, and soon NR was on her way.

As to me, I scarcely slept the rest of the night.  The adrenalin had done its job.  Instead of recovering, I found my symptoms lingering.  Not thinking as clearly as I should have, I rode my bicycle to work on Thursday only to find that the temperature had dropped and the wind had picked up at the end of the day.  That night a good cough kept me up again, and I dragged myself into work on Friday.  When our nurse saw me at lunchtime, he handed me some more pills and said just two words:  "Go home."  I took a taxi and collapsed on my couch for the rest of the afternoon.  Only today, another Saturday, am I finally feeling back to where I was a week ago.

My story in this journal has been one of almost miraculous transformation, a snatching of my life from the hands of a fate that seemed destined to take me to the grave with the greatest of unfulfilled dreams.  At the same time, I don't want to sugarcoat the down moments and put rose colored glasses on everything.  Thus to put it bluntly, for me to get this physically sick was a shock.  I don't recall anything like it in decades.

So now my mind is going in circles with theories.  I am not alone by any means, as this mysterious Romanian virus is wrecking havoc at Embassy Bucharest.  A number of others have been laid up at home as long as I was.  One friend has what we are calling the 100 Day Cough.

But me, the person who never gets sick beyond a 24-hour cold?  Let's see, is there anything different about my life this year than in years past? 

Oh, yes, there is the small matter of HRT.  It's almost ten months since I began.  Could a law of unintended consequences be at work, my body changing not only in ways I had always wanted but also in ways that have lowered my resistance to infection?  I've already had two local MtF women friends tell me, in effect, "Of course, didn't you know?"

I guess I should add to that the pressure of a long divorce and then post-divorce litigation.  Pressure, pressure, and nothing but pressure for nearly four years with no truly relaxing vacation other than my two weeks in the US with my sisters last October. 

So what did I do the day after my workplace transition last November?  I jumped right into advocacy and support!  Here I am, a very involved post representative for Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies (GLIFAA).  Most of my evenings and weekends have been going to volunteer work for GLIFAA and with the local LGBT community.  I feel I have back dues to pay, at least four decades of them, and that my position at a U.S. Embassy overseas puts me in a special position to be able to begin that repayment.  I'm not a great organizer, but I do put my heart into every activity and event that I can.

Would it have been different if I had transitioned on the US?  I imagine I would have been just as much involved, but I would not have been the lead on anything.  I would have been just another pair of hands.  It is a fact of a Foreign Service Officer's life that we are experts on anything that falls within our portfolio.  We are experts whether we know anything or not.  If we don't, then our task is to learn very quickly.  We are the representatives of our country overseas, and it is the very definition of our jobs to be the best representatives we can.  Thus it is that I am a very visible if unofficial representative of the U.S. Government in the Romanian LGBT community.  My hope is that I can also be an effective representative who is remembered fondly and well when she departs.

But to do that, I must recover my health.  So this weekend I am taking time for myself.  I am disconnecting the phones at night and lounging in the sun with a good book.  My only outdoor activity today was the pleasant one of a morning at the beauty parlor.  What better way to start to feel good about oneself again after two weeks of feeling like an infectious blob?

Infections, coughs, and tissue aside, there has been some very good news this month.  In rapid succession I received my new Social Security card and my new Diplomatic Passport.  My trivia question of the month is whether this is the first time the Special Issuance Office has reissued a passport because of a gender transition.  Although I'm certain I'm the first such case for a State Department employee, I can think of a few people at NASA and other agencies who might have stood in that line before me.  With new passport in hand, I will hope for fewer interesting experiences such as the ones I had when I traveled to the US last year using my old passport (The Odd Joys of International Travel while in Transition).

Still Red-Nosed but with a New Hairstyle

The law of unintended HRT consequences may also be having another effect, one that leaves me strangely pleased and smiling.  You see, I got lost a few weeks ago when I was walking to a friend's house.  I decided to take a short cut, but then my infallible sense of direction failed me.  I came out of the back street maze in a place so far removed from my friend that I had to call her and ask her to come out and find me. 

My chair and book are calling, so please forgive me dear friends if I drop everything and attend to their needs.  I'll write again soon, I trust without the need of keeping the box of tissue at hand.  

Yours diplomatically, socially, and congestedly from Bucharest,

RM

March 8 and Me

My readers in the US no doubt are wondering at the title of this posting, perhaps thinking there should be a question mark, as in March 8 and Me?

My readers east of the Danube, however, are already smiling and thinking, "But of course, for Robyn this was the first March 8 of her new life."  If anything, they may be thinking there should be an exclamation point, as in March 8 and Me!  They also be wondering why I think my U.S. friends are scratching their heads.

So please bear with me as I explain.

Dear U.S. friends, March 8 is International Women's Day, and it's big.  I mean as in it's bigger than Valentine's Day and Mother's Day combined.  It dates to 1909, when it was first declared by the Socialist Party in the United States, but to my mind this holiday is associated with the 1917 February Revolution in Russia.  You know, that's the one that toppled the tsar and ushered in a period of democratic hopes that the Bolsheviks smashed eight months later in their October Revolution.  The women of Petrograd were in the streets on February 23 for International Women's Day.  It was the middle of World War I, and the march slogan was bread and peace.

International Women's Day 1917, Russia

Then a strange thing happened.  Bystanders gathered, and at the end of the day, no one went home.  Think of Cairo and the Arab spring.  Now you've got the picture.  The crowds stayed in the streets for days.  More and more people joined in.  The city was hungry, and someone finally thought to break into a bakery.  It turned into a bread riot.  The tsar was away at the front, but the city authorities tried to restore order by calling in troops.  It didn't work out the way they hoped, however, because the good troops were all away fighting the Germans.  The troops that were in the capital were largely raw draftees.  Ordered to shoot into the crowds, they hesitated, seeing so many women's faces, faces that reminded them of their own mothers.  Instead, many went over to the side of the crowd.  At the Imperial Duma -- a proto-parliament that until then had little power -- Prince Lvov, Alexander Kerensky, and a group of other legislators decided it was time to get ahead of events.  They formed what they called a Provisional Committee and sent a telegram to the tsar at the front.  "Sire, to save the country, you must abdicate."  To their own surprise, the tsar acquiesced, and that was the February Revolution.

My U.S. readers are scratching their heads again.  "March 8?  February Revolution?  Has hormone therapy mixed you up on calendars and dates?"  No, no, dear friends.  It's just that Russia in those days was still using the Julian Calendar, which at that time lagged behind the Gregorian Calendar used in the West by thirteen days.  Thus February 23 in Russia was March 8 in the US.  When the Bolsheviks took over in the October Revolution, they switched the country to the Gregorian Calendar.  For the next 70 years, the October Revolution holiday was observed on November 7.  They also put Russia on the metric system.  If they had just stopped there, they might have had a great thing going.  But it all went to their heads with dreams of collectivization and communism.  Then we got Stalin and the Gulag, the Brezhnev decay, and finally Yeltsin and the revolution of August 1991 that brought things back to where they were in the spring of 1917, more or less.

Is it all clear, now?

Oh, I almost forgot, what about the women?  Well, the Bolsheviks didn't like the idea of women or anyone else marching in the streets, so they took the March 8 holiday and turned it into a completely apolitical women's day, sort of our Valentine's Day and Mother's Day rolled into one but more so.  It's still a national holiday in Russia.  Everything is closed, and that includes the U.S. Embassy.  Flowers and gifts are given.  It's the one day when Russian men turn soft and treat the women in their lives -- and I mean all the women in their lives -- as queens and princesses.  They have to!  They know what will happen to them on March 9 if they don't.

When I was stationed in Uzbekistan, all the local guys at Embassy Tashkent formed a receiving line.  It ran from the front entrance almost out to the street.  As the workday began, the guys greeted each and every woman, Uzbek and American, as she arrived for work.  By the time she entered the Embassy, each woman held a small bouquet of roses.

Now my readers east of the Danube are scratching their heads.  "Surely you celebrate March 8 in the US, don't you?"  No, I'm afraid we don't.  Some progressive newscasters might mention International Women's Day, but no one gives it a second thought.  Yes, dear friends east of the Danube, that is the sad reality on our side of the Atlantic.

In the 1980s and onward, I took my own enjoyment in International Women's Day whenever I was east of the Danube.  I would give the flowers and chocolate, and I would give the dinner invitations.  I knew that gender transition was an impossible fantasy for me, but I also knew how I would like to be treated in that world of fantasy.  I took my own silent joy in giving.

So imagine my joy this year!  This is now my day.  Alas, March 8 is no longer a national holiday in Romania, but it's still big.  It was too cold for the guys to form a receiving line out to the street, but inside our work home on the outskirts of Bucharest, all was warmth.   A knock on my office door, another flower in my hands.  Bouquets covered the tables at lunchtime.  Doors were held more gallantly than usual, and we women smiled at each other in passing throughout this day, our special day.  Cards and e-cards flew through the ether, including a special one from my dear friend Nadine in Moldova:

Любимая и дорогая наша подруга! Мне очень приятно поздравить тебя от всего сердца с Международным женским днем!  Мы первый раз это делаем и я так рада!!!  Пусть твоя прекрасная и заразительная улыбка будет всегда олицетворять твое счастливое сердце, а твои глаза излучающие доброту и понимание пусть всегда сияют, чувствуя любовь близских людей и верных друзей!!!

Dear and beloved girlfriend!  I am so happy  to wish you a Happy International Women's Day with my whole heart!  This is the first time we can greet you with this wish, and it makes me glad!!!  May your beautiful and infectious smile always be the face that reflects a happy heart.  May your eyes always shine forth with goodness and understanding, feeling the love of your close ones and true friends!!!

My friend F1 from Uzbekistan said it simply and with beauty:  "I knew you as a soft and sincere man, and my happiness for you today is that you have lived to know the joys of womanhood."

In Romania and neighboring Moldova, the entire month of March is for women.  March 1 is Mărțișor, a celebration of women, life, and continuity.  Men give red and white ribbons and charms to their women friends, and women give them to each other.  According to tradition, women wear the charms and ribbons on their wrists or over their hearts.  As the spring blooms, women and girls move the charms from their wrists to the branches of fruit trees, a sign of fertility for the year to come.

Winter's End, A First Bloom

March 1, March 8, and then March 17 and St. Patrick's Day -- yes, the wearing of the green extends even to Bucharest -- March is a celebration of spring and of life.  The long winter, seemingly endless just three weeks ago, has broken.  The snow drifts are melting, and the Sun warms skin that it has not touched since last year.  It is a wonderful, joyful time for me, Robyn, to be alive in this, the year that brought the first March 8 of my life.