Saturday, May 19, 2012

Rising for the Moon: Farewell to a Dear Friend

I have been teary eyed for much of yesterday and today.  No, it's not allergies.  It is springtime in the Foreign Service (FS), a season that brings tears of farewell as close friends pack to go, destined for new posts somewhere further down the FS corridor.  For that's the way it is; that is our fortune.

I met Nat on my first day in Bucharest in October 2010.  There I was, lost in the courtyard, puzzled over which of three buildings at our old Embassy might house the office of my new supervisor.  Nat took me under her wing and guided me through the labyrinth.

Nat has an engaging smile and laugh, a warmth that is irresistible.  She wasn't that much newer to Bucharest than I was, and she was doing a career adjustment of her own, an adjustment that played a role in my coming to Romania.  You see, Nat had worked for many years at State doing IT, but in Bucharest she was beginning her first-ever tour as a human resources (HR) officer.  She had traded in her computer hardware for human beings.  Anyone who knows Nat will find it hard to believe that someone so gregarious and full of life ever could have been a computer tech. 

As I came to understand in time, Nat was the first person in Bucharest who had heard of this political officer pacing the cage in Maine and wanting to do an IT job.  She saw my file and took it to the Management Counselor and then to Curtis, my soon-to-be department head.  It made perfect sense to Nat that a political officer might want to do something different.  After all, wasn't that exactly what she was doing in Romania?  Without Nat, I might have sat in Maine far, far longer than I did in search of a job.

I didn't know Nat well during my first months.  I was too self-absorbed with my post-divorce litigation and then with my first tentative steps towards transition.

This all changed in March 2011.  It was Kyna who brought us together when she proposed that I go with her to the theater, my first-ever evening out in Bucharest as Robyn (Stepping Out in Bucharest).  When I found out that Nat would be going along, I called her.  That was the day when Nat became the second person at Embassy Bucharest who knew I was contemplating gender transition.

Just imagine what it must have been like for Nat when I gave her this news.  Here she was, a first-tour HR officer who had never before encountered issues of gender identity, and now she would be faced with managing the first-ever gender transition of a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) at an overseas post.  Imagining our roles reversed, I could see myself thinking, "Please, anything but this."  Nat, on the other hand, took the news calmly.

I'm not sure Nat entirely believed or understood me at first, but this changed quickly.  Kyna, Nat, and I would go out together on weekends, just three girlfriends in Bucharest.  Or, as Nat would say, we were three gurlfriends out on the town.  It didn't take long before Nat knew me as she saw and experienced me, as Robyn, not as a photo and a name in a personnel file.

We put together the Gender Transition Committee in early summer 2011.  Nat chaired most of the meetings.  We worked closely together to understand guidance from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on the Employment of Transgender Individuals in the Federal Workplace.  We studied the experience of USAID, NASA, and other departments and agencies that already had experience with gender transition.  We worked together on plans for announcing my transition to the local Romanian staff.

As my readers know, it all came to pass on November 10, 2011.  On November 12, Nat and I sat together at the Marine Ball.  From that day forward I have been legally, diplomatically, and very happily yours as Robyn in all aspects of my life.

But that was just the start of the story with Nat.  At work there was and still is much to do to complete the name and gender change in all personnel records.  Doing it for today's files was easy, but in accordance with OPM guidance, the records must also be changed retroactively.  In weekly meetings that sometimes include Department HR in Washington, we've been slogging through this and more.

It's much more than work and personnel records, however.  In the months since last November, we have become close friends.  Nat says she is a beauty school dropout.  She means it literally, having gone to beauty school at one point in her life.  Nat spent a Sunday afternoon with me in January, instructing me on the finer points of hair care products and proper use of a blow dryer.  We went clothes and shoe shopping together.  We became Friday night dinner and movie buddies.  It had been so long since I had last gone out to a movie, and now it was a regular end-of-the week tradition.

I knew it would be hard to see Nat go, and that is why I am so teary eyed.  Yesterday was Nat's last day, the last day for hugs and farewells.  She is off now for home leave and then her follow-on post.

We had our own private farewell a week ago.  We drove north about 50 miles beyond the city of Ploiesti, where we spent the afternoon enjoying a meal at a wonderful seafood restaurant.  Then we went shopping for glassware at Romblast, buying for pennies vases and bowls that at the tourist shops cost hundreds of dollars.  We talked over all we had gone through together.  We laughed, we shed a few tears, and we hugged each other.  We also talked of plans to meet again in Bangkok next January.  (Alert readers may already divine some future intent from this.)

I miss my friend and wish her the most wonderful home leave.  You have earned it, Nat, and I know I'm just one of many at Embassy Bucharest who would say that.  I'll leave you with a few words from a 1975 song by British singer Sandy Denny and the group Fairport Convention.  She might be singing about what it is like to be on the road as performer, but so much of what she says applies to us also. 
I travel over the sea and ride the rolling sky,
For that's the way it is, that is my fortune.
There are many ears to please, many people's love to try,
And every day's begun rising for the moon. 
There's a heart in every place, there's a tear for each farewell.
For that's the way it is, that is my fortune.
I'll lure you as the lace that the wayward gypsies sell,
With the sinking of the sun, rising of the moon.
Drum bun, dear Nat.  Tootles, gurlfriend.  May you continue to live each day rising for the moon and thereby touch a star as you have touched my heart.

*********************



Friday, May 11, 2012

A Reader's Guide to Transgender in State

Welcome to the reader's guide or, rather, table of contents that should make it easier to navigate the chronology of my story as I relate it in this web journal.

Over the course of ten months beginning in July 2011, I wrote 24 posts of a retrospective nature that give historical background about my life experience as a transgender person.  I intermixed these with an equal or greater number of other posts describing my life as it was moving forward in 2011 and 2012.  That intermixing makes it difficult to decipher the chronological progression.  My hope is that the table of contents below will make this task easier for anyone who may wish to know the full story, chapter by chapter, from beginning to end.  From 2012 onward, the progression is mainly chronological in nature, describing:
 

  • My life in Romania (2010-13);  
  • My journey to Thailand for gender confirmation surgery (2013);  
  • My year in the US when I served as president of GLIFAA, the official employee association for lgbt+ employees at the Department of State, USAID, and other foreign affairs agencies (2013-14);
  • My three years in Kazakhstan (2014-17) including "Project Sultana" and reaction to the election of 2016; and
  • My life after returning to the US (2017-present) in the aftermath of the election and the failure of "Project Sultana."
While in Kazakhstan I briefly maintained a parallel journal that did not include transgender issues.  It can be found at http://attitude-maneuver.blogspot.com/.

Best to all from Bucharest, Washington, Astana, and from my adopted state of Maine!

NOTE:  Parts 1-3 give historical background.  The posts therein were written between July 2011 and May 2012.  Those marked with an asterisk (*) have been removed from the web journal insofar as they have been superseded by my book Queer Diplomacy:  A Transgender Journey in the Foreign Service that is available for puchase on Amazon.

Part 1 -- So How Far Back Does This Go (1954-2002)? 
  1. The Early Years*
  2. Where Were You on July 22, 1972?*
  3. WahooWa!*
  4. Under Transylvanian Moons*
  5. CSC:  The Only Limitations Are the Ones You Bring with You*
  6. My Great Purge*
  7. Hubble Goes Up, I Go Down*
  8. Heaven Can Be Yours Just for Now*
  9. NoTransition*
Part 2 -- The Day my Universe Changed (2002-2010)
  1. A Dinner Conversation*
  2. Looking for George Kennan*
  3. Povorot*
  4. Mission to Moscow*
  5. Decision on Gros Morne*
  6. I Wish I Was in the Land of Cotton*
  7. Pacing the Cage*
 Part 3 -- A Nine Month Story (October 2010 - June 2011)
  1. Kyna*
  2. The Education of a Transgender Rip Van Winkle*
  3. Fortochka*
  4. Liftoff*
  5. Stepping Out in Bucharest*
  6. Stepping Out in Court*
  7. My Guy, My Son*
  8. Mâine* 

NOTE:  Parts 4 and beyond were written in real-time and describe daily life and events beginning in July 2011.

Part 4 -- Looking Strange and Enjoying It (June - November 2011)

  1. My Coming Out Letter to my Friends at NASA
  2. Electrolysis in the Land of Vlad the Impaler
  3. Письмо моим русскоязычным друзьям; A Letter to my Russian Speaking Friends
  4. Thank You, Madam Secretary
  5. Looking Strange and Enjoying It: Two Months of HRT
  6. Interlude:  Bucharest by Bicycle
  7. How We Kidnapped Irina Nita
  8. Tears for a Colonel
  9. On Finding and Losing a Boyfriend in Seven Days
  10. A Bushel and a Peck and Up Around the NEC
  11. The Odd Joys of International Travel while in Transition 
Part 5 -- Real Life Experience (RLE) (November 2011 - December 2012)

  1. The Big Day:  A Letter to My Sister
  2. After the Ball
  3. A Bucharest Christmas
  4. Of Friends, Mammograms, and Van Gogh
  5. Old Clothes and Transgender DADT
  6. Transitional Bicycling and a Night of Lunacy
  7. What Do Uranium and a Transgender Foreign Service Officer Have in Common?*
  8. March 8 and Me
  9. Diplomatically, Socially, and Congestedly Yours
  10. Voice: The Acid Test
  11. If Thy Friends Doth Protest Too Much, Do Not Remove Thy Clothes
  12. Rising for the Moon: Farewell to a Dear Friend
  13. Remove the Document, and You Remove the Man
  14. Proudly from Tirana
  15. Proudly from Bucharest
  16. Looking for Spa Therapy
  17. 3F@RM's, Stepbystep_ts, and Our Transsexual Summer
  18. Try to Remember
  19. To Peris(h) by Bicycle*
  20. Foreign Service Bidding and Transgender DADT
  21. Turning to the East
  22. Autumn Comes to 45-deg N
  23. An Exclusive Halloween Ogre Just for Us
  24. Love Is but a Song We Sing: A Message of Peace and Love to Friends
  25. My First Anniversary
  26. November Postcards*
  27. Hamlet and Healing

Part 6 -- Gender Confirmation -- or -- The Exclamation Point (December 2012 - March 2013)

  1. My White Romanian Christmas
  2. So You Want to Be in Pictures?
  3. The Journey Begins
  4. Our Day at the Beach
  5. OD Checks In; I Check Out
  6. Fates that Intertwine
  7. Like a Natural Woman
  8. All in the Zadnitsa
  9. Simple Gifts
  10. Collapse of the USSR
  11. A Matter of Depth
  12. We Interrupt this Program
  13. Vodka without Beer?
  14. My Million Baht Body
  15. My Own General Contractor
  16. Home Sweet Home in Romania


Part 7 -- Romania Farewell (March - June 2013)

  1. Back in the Saddle
  2. Radio Days
  3. On Losing a Daughter*
  4. Both Sides Now*
  5. The Carpet, Too, Is Moving Under You*
  6. Bucharest Farewell
  7. Mâine, a Reprise*
  8. Standing Proudly with Friends, 2010-13

Part 8 -- Bringing Myself Home (July 2013 - September 2014)
  1. A Tale of Two Katahdins
  2. In Homage to Allyson Robinson
  3. Chelsea Manning, Roasting Vegetables, and Me
  4. On Reading "Middlesex"
  5. Bucharest and Roxana on the Potomac
  6. Rising from the Ashes
  7. Our Exclusive Halloween Ogre Visits Again
  8. November: What I've Lost
  9. November: What I've Gained
  10. JFK, LBJ, and Their Gift to Me
  11. Our Winter Love: Thailand Anniversary and Return to Bucharest
  12. Please Continue to Hold During the Silence
  13. Proudly from Washington, Proudly from GLIFAA
  14. Bringing Myself Home

Part 9 -- My Life on the Steppe (October 2014 - August 2017)

NOTE:  See also companion web journal, "Alice in State," at
http://attitude-maneuver.blogspot.com

  1. A Stealthy Guest Appearance
  2. Proudly from Astana, Remembering '75
  3. Auld Lang Syne; Saying Goodbye to a Friend Five Years: Looking Back, Looking Forward
  4. Resistance Is Not Futile
  5. Trotsky, French Novels, and Us
  6. Petlura at the Gates
  7. What Would George Kennan Say?
  8. Project Sultana: A Plea for Help
  9. Yes, We Can!
  10. Waters of March
  11. Letter to a Respected Senior Colleague
  12. My Declaration
  13. Interview with Botagoz Omarova

Part 10 -- Return to the US . . . and Home?  (September 2017 - present) 

  1. My Journey . . . Home?*
  2. A Stranger Among My Own 
  3. Out of the Muck