Old Clothes and Transgender DADT

Last September we set the date for my workplace transition at the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest.  With November 10 fixed in the calendar, I expanded my new professional wardrobe, packing the old one into boxes as pant-suits, skirt-suits, dresses and pullovers took their place in my closets and drawers.  The two large boxes with my old business suits, dress shirts, and ties sat forlornly in my back room.  What was I going to do with them?

If I had been in the US, I would have donated everything to Goodwill or similar charitable thrift organization.  In Romania I didn't know what I would do.  I didn't want to throw everything away.  To whom should I give it?  My housekeeper who cleans and cooks for me once a week took a few things for her father, but the boxes were still full in my back room at the start of January.

This week my old clothes finally found a good cause.  A Scottish ex-pat friend put me in touch with another Brit in Bucharest who has been active in charitable work.  As of Wednesday evening, my old clothes have started their journey to a new life in northeastern Romania, the scene of severe flooding that left thousands homeless in 2010.  Another tie with the past has been cut as I move forward.  I poured a glass of red wine and toasted the past, smiling towards the future.

Signing Factura Using New Dip ID

It has been a beautiful weekend in Bucharest.  Friday night dinner with embassy friends who supported my transition through hard times last year was a warm way to begin.  Today I rendezvoused near the Arc de Triomphe with one of my new friends, PA, a young Peace Corps volunteer from Michigan.  Many embassies have a beautiful tradition of inviting Peace Corps volunteers and those on academic exchanges to Thanksgiving dinner.  I was one such lucky recipient of Thanksgiving warmth in frigid Leningrad in 1987, spending an evening with other students and academics as a guest of the Consul General.  Last year I was on the other side of the table, so to speak, as I mixed with Peace Corps volunteers at the Ambassador's Thanksgiving dinner.  That's where PA and I met, and dinner conversation led to a promise that "Of course, we must get together again!"

Arc de Triomphe in Summer

My transition has been very visible to family, friends, the entire staff of Embassy Bucharest, friends at other embassies around the world, and to old colleagues at CSC/NASA.  I transitioned in this way on purpose for support, self-protection, and, most importantly, to leave no friend behind.  I wanted anyone who had ever been important in my life to hear this from my own lips in my own words.  Writing these notes from my perch in Romania has been my way of continuing the conversation with friends who are time zones and continents away.

One of the greatest joys of the two months since November 10 has been meeting new friends who know nothing about my background, nothing about my transition.  It has been wonderful to meet and talk without having to trot out my entire story, just to have conversations that are normal.

Do you sense where this is leading?  Like others, I am having to work out for myself how much I tell and when.  I'm starting to think of this as the inwardly directed, transgender version of DADT, "If you don't ask, I won't tell."  At age 57 I have a history and can't sweep my prior life under the carpet.  I already am hitting this mark with PA.  When we met on Thanksgiving, I inquired how long she would be in Romania.  Through January was the answer.  In my mind I thought, "Great!  We can be friends for two months without my having to lead off with a there's something you should know conversation."  

Peasant Village Museum (early autumn)

Today, however, as we walked through the Peasant Village Museum at Herastrau Park, PA told me her time in Romania has been extended into the spring.  She lives not a ten minute walk from me in a sparse apartment in which the oven is not working and where the electricity is more off than on.  Remembering what it was like to live in a dorm in Leningrad in 1987-88, I immediately blurted, "Come on over and visit me for some home cooking."

"Oh sh*t," I thought after I said this.  "I'm going to have to tell her."  The photo of me standing next to my son at his high school graduation is not to be hidden away.  By that time we were sitting out of the cold in a small Lebanese cafe.  "Do I tell her straight out now?"  Perhaps it was self-centered, but I held back.  "Please let us just be normal girlfriends for a little longer."

Yes, sigh, by next time I will have to explain.  From what I can tell of PA, she will be surprised but readily accepting.  It's just that I'm tired of having to be accepted all the time.  I'd much rather just be.  Given that I am living through the greatest miracle of my life, I know that this is one wish too far, one that borders on ingratitude.  I doubt that I am alone in that feeling, the wish of wanting to just be.  I'm learning another lesson, one that others have had to face after progressing into their new lives.

But as we hugged each other goodbye, I could not help from thinking how wonderful it was, just being for those few minutes longer.

Of Friends, Mammograms, and Van Gogh

It's the first post-holiday weekend in Bucharest.  The weather is blustery, rainy, and cold but not cold enough for snow.  It's the perfect weather for long talks, visits with friends, writing, and just curling up on the couch with a book and a glass of wine.  Although born in New York and having lived most of my life in the mid-Atlantic, I love the northern latitudes even with their winter unpredictability and grayness.

Devoting as much time as I have to retrospective jottings has been important to maintaining touch with family and friends.  One of the fun things about working for the Foreign Service is that one gets to travel and live overseas.  I learn new languages, live in new countries, and make new friends, but maintaining close relations with those one has left behind in the US is hard even for those of us with normal lives.  Imagine what it is like to come out as a transsexual in transition to family and friends when there is an ocean, a continent or two, and many time zones in-between.  Although I did as much as I could in person on three visits to the US last year, I started writing these notes as a way to explain more fully what had been hidden for decades to those who thought they knew me well.  The most gratifying part of writing has been that it has worked.  My son and sisters have become closer, and many friends have rallied around in ways I never expected.  Thus the retrospectives, some of them difficult to write, have their place.

But not all friends have Internet, and not all have followed.  One friend whom I have known since 1978 has drifted further and further away, and after a phone conversation on Thursday evening, I believe she is gone for good.  Like me, AJ was a misfit.  I met her through a friend while in graduate school.  She was pretty much a street person just a year or two older than me who had a hard time getting along with anyone.  I took her in and for months she had her bed roll on my floor in New Haven, Connecticut.  Then she disappeared and did not turn up again until the late 1980s.  She had joined the Hare Krishna and lived in their Baltimore temple.  At least she lived there until she was unceremoniously shown the door and ended up on my doorstep again.  Thus it has been ever since.  We talk by phone, sometimes frequently and then sometimes not at all for a year or two.  From time to time she would turn up at my doorstep in need of help, and I would always provide.  She was one of the first to learn of my being transgender in 1990, and she was one of the few who did not reject me.  The last time I saw her was in 2007.

Sigh.  AJ does not have Internet access and has no idea what I look like today other than for a photograph I sent her a few months ago.  For the past year and a half she has been adamant in trying to dissuade me from transition, asking me to forget my physical body and live in the spiritual world.  She could accept that I am transgender as long as I did nothing physical about it, a reaction that is unfortunately all too common.  On Thursday I told her I would be going for a mammogram the next day, and this finally brought home to her just how far I have gone down this road.  She had stumbled over my name for months, but somehow the mammogram hit her harder than a legal name change, a new passport, and an evolving voice.  Our conversation ended with her saying she did not think she could accept me any longer.  The following morning I awoke to a critical, painful voice mail message.  What had been a dialog has devolved into something much uglier, almost abusive.  A friendship has ended.

One side of me is guiltily happy that I will no longer have to try to convince or persuade, let along help AJ out of a difficult bind in future misadventures.  Another side sheds a tear for losing a relationship of 33 years duration, a voice that was there in my own difficult times.

The losing and gaining of friends is well known to everyone who has walked this road before me.  It's part of the process, as I already knew from my failed attempt to come out in 1990.  The happier side is that many other old friends have become closer, and to new friends in Romania I am and have always been Robyn.  

Lipscani Street Scene

Venturing out under gray skies this morning, I headed to Van Gogh in the Lipscani district for brunch with a friend.  Lipscani is Bucharest's old town, a pedestrian area of small shops and cafes in the city center.  Van Gogh is a favorite gathering place for many of my friends here, and it has also become one of mine.  It's a warm and cozy place to get out of the cold on blustery days.

I first met my friend SL at ACCEPT, the Romanian national LGBT rights association, several months ago, and we had been trying to get together ever since.  Today we swapped stories of growing up transgender in the US and growing up gay in Romania in the Communist period.  To me, every LGBT person I have met in Romania is a hero, and that is all the more so for those who grew up before the overthrow of Ceausescu.  My own timidity in the face of social conservatism in the US in the 1960s and 70s looks like petty cowardice in comparison to what LGBT people had to endure here.

After brunch we walked for a bit in Lipscani before going our separate ways.  I had a smile on my face, the blustery day seemingly that much brighter for good company.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot to say that the mammogram was negative.  Despite being between thin and normal weight most of my life, I've always had breasts that were at least A cup or somewhat larger.  I should have been having mammograms for years, but no doctor in the US ever referred me even after I would casually mention that one of my sisters had been treated for breast cancer.  When the Romanian doctor at the Sanador Clinic told me, "Ms. McCutcheon, everything is normal," I breathed a sigh of relief.

This has been my weekend in Bucharest, a weekend of friends lost and friends gained, a mammogram, and Van Gogh.  May this winter day find you all surrounded by a warm, loving glow.

A Bucharest Christmas

Summer and fall in Bucharest were brilliant in their sunlit days and blue skies.  From May until December, what precipitation there was fell at night or during the workday.  As little as three weeks ago I was riding my bicycle to and from work.  We were beginning to wonder, where is winter?

Then there was a week of fog.  Everything was shrouded in mist.  Temperatures dropped, and a drizzle turned to light snow.  Winter came, and now it is Christmas Eve.

This is my second Christmas in Bucharest.  A year ago it did not feel like Christmas, embroiled as I was in a legal battle that seemed without end.  I put up no decorations of my own and made no Christmas plans.  Then one day I came home from work, opened my door, and stopped short.  My apartment had been decorated!  There were Christmas wreaths, candles, ornaments, and Merry Christmas signs.  It was all the doing of my Bucharest friend K*, soon to be my best friend and one of the most significant people ever to appear in my life.  Unbeknownst  to me, she had gotten a key to my apartment and had decorated it along with her housekeeper without any hint to me.

A year ago I could never have guessed that this year I would be the happiest I have ever been in my 57 years.  This year I did my own decorating, putting up a small Christmas tree for the first time since joining the Foreign Service.  There are presents received and presents to give under the tree, and I am making the rounds from one buffet or dinner to another.  Santa Claus came to Embassy Bucharest on Friday, and I gave him the biggest of hugs.  This year Santa has given me what I secretly prayed for on Christmas Eve nights 50 years ago:  my womanhood.

I am far, far from the first person to walk this transition road, and much of what I write is familiar or even dull to those who have gone down this path long before me.  Yet for me all the milestones, even the small ones, are bright and new, each a shiny ornament for the season. 

My Childhood Christmas Creche (circa 1962)

One ornament came two weeks ago during the fog when I asked M* for a ride home.  "Of course," she said, "and then we'll go together to the book club." "What book club?" I asked.  She seemed surprised I knew nothing about it.  Later in the day I asked my friend N*, and she too reacted with surprise.  "Well of course you're coming, aren't you?"  With two such insistent requests in one afternoon about a group I had never heard of, I had to go and find out.

Mom and Dad's Christmas Village

It turns out that the International Book Club that has existed in Bucharest for years and years is known more informally as the Ladies Night Out Club.  Fourteen women, many from outside the Embassy and whom I had never met, gathered that evening, each bringing a dinner dish or dessert.  (I happened to have some chicken tetrazzini I had cooked the previous day, so I didn't have to embarrass myself by coming empty handed.)  Over wine and dinner, everyone talked about this month's reading, Galileo's Daughter, before digressing into general conversation about the lot of women then and through all times.  For me it was a magical evening that rivaled the Marine Ball.  "I can't believe I'm really sitting here," I thought as I pinched myself.  I had been accepted and was as much a part of the group as anyone there.

Then there was the Sunday afternoon when N*, who describes herself as a beauty school dropout, taught me the finer points of handling a blow dryer and brushes.  Other Embassy friends have been giving me makeup, hair preparations, and beauty advice.

Earlier this week one of my Embassy girlfriends came up to me and asked where I had bought my boots.  "Mine are worn out, and I love yours!" she said.  Another friend came up to ask where I had bought my skirt suit.  Then there was the handsome man, recently arrived in Bucharest, whom I met at a sweets and chocolate get-together last weekend.  When he heard we would both be part of a group that is going to a Christmas Day buffet, he said, "That's another good reason for me to go!"  I nearly blushed.

Santa has been good to me in smaller, practical things as well.  Much sooner than I expected, I received my new tourist passport this week, and just yesterday I received my new diplomatic ID from the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Indeed, it is a wonderful life.

Bucharest at Christmas reminds me of small town America.  Christmas lights hang over all major streets, and the markets are full of wonderful smells as people rush home with their last minute shopping.  Men carry Christmas trees, and women carry wreaths and holly.

It is a very, very Merry Christmas in Bucharest this year.  To my family and friends and to all who have found their way to these notes, may your Christmas be as merry as mine, full of warmth, love, and happiness.  And to those who find themselves down and hopeless, know that this is how I felt just one year ago.  If that is where you find yourself, may you have your own K* in your life who brings you cheer and hope in spite of yourself.

I'll see you all again in 2012. 

After the Ball

Two weeks ago I wrote about the excitement of transition day at our Embassy in Bucharest and the glamor of the Marine Ball.  "OK," you say, "We believe the excitement and glamor part, but what about real life?  How has it been?"

The answer can be summed up in one beautiful word:  normal.  It's been absolutely, wonderfully normal.  I get up a few minutes earlier, true, to be as well groomed as I can before walking to the bus stop and waiting for my bus, just another professional woman on her way to work.  I walk through the Embassy gate, and the marine on duty greets me, "Good Morning, Ma'am."  I make my way to my office, greeting and being greeted as I go.  "Good morning, Robyn," I hear again and again.

I go through my day as always, but now with a smile and a much lighter step.  I had avoided our cafeteria and other public spaces for months, but now I break for lunch at noon or 12:30, grab the sandwich I brought from home, and down to the lunch room I go.  It's been wonderful to talk with so many of my colleagues who until two weeks ago hardly knew me.

First Day at Work

A member of our local staff with whom I work closely told me how stunned he had been by my announcement.  He said he went home that night with a heavy weight on his mind and told his wife, "My boss is becoming a woman."  She turned around, looked at him, and said, "So what?"  From that moment, he said, he realized that I was still the same person who had been evolving before his eyes without him knowing it.  Not once has he failed to call me Robyn, not once has he used the wrong personal pronoun by mistake.  I had been so worried about losing him, and now, realizing how wrong I had been in this worry, I want to hug him each time I go to speak with him.

 

Our HR office took a new photo of me for the Embassy registry, and I have a new badge with my new name.   My name has been changed in all directories and in the computer systems.  A colleague from Ankara with whom I worked long-distance for several days wrote a letter to my manager, telling him how grateful he was "to Robyn for her assistance in solving a problem that had plagued us for days."

Woman in a Red Hat

I spent last Saturday with good friends and bought a new hat.  I've been to an art reception this week and to Thanksgiving dinner at the Ambassador's residence, where I sat next to a Peace Corps volunteer who had been to Central Asia.  We talked about the never-ending water issues in that part of the world while stuffing ourselves with those deliciously awful foods that could size me out of the wardrobe I bought just two months ago.

Now my kitchen is filled with Thanksgiving aromas as I prepare for my own celebration with a number of local friends on Saturday.  I think back to the Transgender Day of Remembrance observance that I participated in a week ago at ACCEPT, the Romanian LGBT advocacy organization.  As troubled as my own life has been, I am one of the lucky ones.  I am alive!  I have more to give thanks for this year than ever before, for in this year, with the help and love of friends, family, and co-workers, I have become myself not just in the secret recesses of my own hopes and imagination but in the real day-to-day life that we all live.  Transition can happen even in the fifth decade of life, even in the State Department, and even at an overseas Embassy.  Life is normal, just as it should be, for the first time.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  Robyn sends a hug from Bucharest.

The Big Day: A Letter to My Sister

Hi Mary,

Your good thoughts and energy got me through a long sleepless night from Wednesday to Thursday, so worried I was that after all these years, the biggest day of my life might not happen.  After three strikes -- college in the 1970s, 1990, and again in 2000-02 -- could this all be just a dream from which I would wake to find it was all a mirage?

It was only when I parked my bicycle in the Embassy parking lot on Thursday morning that the fog and worries vanished.  I turned on my cell phone and saw the one word that I still needed from one key person to let the day's events unfold.  That word was the simplest, shortest, happiest word I have ever seen:  YES.

Mary, it was the happiest day of my life.  The manager of the section I work in handled the announcement so beautifully at the special staff meeting he had called for 10am.  He opened by saying that today's meeting wasn't really to talk about work but to discuss the new management policy that had come out last week in which gender identity had been added to the anti-discrimination statement.  He asked if anyone had any idea what gender identity meant, what it meant to be transgender.  Our local staff just shrugged their shoulders, and he proceeded to give a short but good explanation.  He continued that all eyes were on Embassy Bucharest this day, as ours is the first U.S. Embassy we know of at which an American staff member had declared himself or herself to be transgender.  Then he paused and added, "She is sitting in this room.  I would like to introduce you all to Robyn."

I spoke for a good half hour.  Jaws dropped, and there were looks of incredulity on many faces when I began.  By the time I had finished, the expressions had changed to compassion, and I could see a tear or two.  People from whom I had never expected it told me how brave I was, and there were many handshakes and hugs.

I had set my e-mail announcement to all Embassy staff to be sent automatically at 10:30am, and thus by the time we walked out of our staff meeting at 11am, everyone knew.  We have a weekly Embassy newsletter, and it appeared at 2pm.  Whenever someone arrives or departs from our Bucharest family, there is a "welcome" or a "farewell."  This week it said, "Farewell Robert," and right next to it were the words "Welcome Robyn."

I did no work for the rest of the day as I was deluged by congratulatory e-mails.  I couldn't walk the halls without someone stopping me and expressing support.  I received personal e-mails from the the highest levels that I could not have imagined the day before.  All day long the words were, "Welcome Robyn!"

I continued to walk and dance on air all Friday and Saturday.  I had the first professional pedicure and manicure of my life, somewhat amusingly having to invent a tale to explain why my feet have so many callouses.

Next I went to the hairdresser.  Andrea and I have been working towards this day for nearly six months.  I was with her for three hours as she colored, highlighted, and styled.  I put on my glasses and looked at myself in the mirror when she was done.  My own reflection took my breath away.  For the first time in my life I felt and looked beautiful!

Before the Ball

The big celebration, the event at which I came out into society, was the annual Marine Ball on Saturday night.  The same handsome, brave marines who day in, day out, had greeted me with the words "Good Morning, Sir!" now stood in a receiving line in their dress uniforms and greeted me, "Good Evening, Ma'am!" as they presented me a with rose.

Mary, I drank champagne and danced like I had never danced before.  I felt like Natasha Rostova in War in Peace who goes to her first ball.  At age 57 my dreams -- the dreams of any 13-year-old girl -- were coming true.  I danced and twirled and floated in my gown and high heels.  How I want to learn to dance for real now!

Oh, Mary, how good it is to be alive!  After all the years, the decades of hiding and pain, I'm me.  I'm no longer an artificial construct living for others.  I've been a Foreign Service Officer for seven years now, serving and representing my country to the best of my ability, but never have I been so proud to represent the United States as I am this day.  I am living proof of how far we have come as a diverse, accepting society in my lifetime.

Now it's a quiet Sunday.  I look at the rose from last night's ball and know it's not a dream.  Tonight there is no need to frizz up my hair and take off the polish.  I don't need go back to looking like the "mad scientist."  Tomorrow it is I, Robyn, who goes to work.

What a wonderful, magical time to be alive!

Love,

Robyn 

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

You can find my announcement letter to Embassy staff as well as the "farewell/welcome" notice in our Embassy newsletter at the following links --

• Transition Announcement Letter
• Dacian Dispatch Farewell and Welcome

The Odd Joys of International Travel while in Transition

I just spent two weeks in Maine with my sisters.  For the first time, we were together as four sisters, not three sisters and a brother.  One of the chief orders of business other than talking and eating plenty of Maine seafood was to outfit me with an expanded professional wardrobe for the fast approaching time when I will end my double life and will begin coming to work as Robyn.  My sisters were my fashion committee, and we devoted the rainy afternoons to this task.  We had a marvelous time.

What I want to write about here, however, is not the vacation as such but the unexpected, nicely odd experiences I had flying between Romania and the U.S.  Since I still have my guy passports, both diplomatic and tourist, I purposely dressed in drab, unisex travel clothes.  I expected no problems, but I was wrong.

Photo from my Passport

It began in Amsterdam, where I needed to change flights and had to go through security again.  Something  triggered  the detection scanners, and the security agents indicated they would need to pat me down.  They were speaking between themselves in Dutch while I waited, but I caught enough words to understand that they were uncertain whether I was a man or a woman and whether a female or male agent should have the honors.  Surprised, I interrupted in English, explained that I am a transsexual in transition, and told the male agent it was OK to proceed.  When he was finished, he said, "Thank you, ma'am."

On the flight to the U.S., it was ma'am the entire time from the cabin crew.  I was thrilled to be taken as female even when I was purposely trying not to, but I began to worry about passport control in the U.S.  Sure enough, the young officer at passport control in Detroit was confused when he looked first at me and then at the passport.  He clearly needed help.  When he started asking the usual questions, I said that I worked at the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest and was coming home to the U.S. for vacation and to start a legal name change.  "Oh," he said, "what will you be changing your name to?"  "Robyn," I replied, and he then held out the passport, pointing to the M for sex.  "Will this be changing?"  When I replied "yes," he smiled and sent me on my way.

Photo from Embassy ID:  "The Mad Scientist"

After two days in Washington, I flew up to Maine on a domestic flight.  Again in guy mode, I thought better of showing my passport as an ID.  I had in my suitcase a recent ID badge from the Embassy that at least shows me with long hair, my mad scientist look.  That did the trick.  There were no quizzical glances or questions.

Arriving in Maine was a different matter.  Ironically, I had begun exploring whether there was still a chance I could yet walk the transition road in this lifetime when I was in Maine during the summer of 2010.  It all started there, but my neighbors in rural Burlington were about the only people left in my universe who did not know I had begun transition.  I had asked my neighbors Frank and Kelli if they could pick me up at the airport, but when I got off the plane I instead saw a stranger holding a sign with my name.  This turned out to be Fred, another neighbor from down the road whom Frank and Kelli had commissioned.  I waved, but he took no notice.  I had to walk right up to him and tell him I was the person he was looking for.  Clearly I was not quite the guy he was expecting.  We had an awkward 45 minute drive from Bangor to Burlington.

After throwing my suitcase into my cabin -- the only home I have today in the U.S. -- I walked next door to see my neighbors.  Kelli gave me a hug and invited me in to dinner.  As polite as ever, both Kelli and Frank looked at me strangely as though an elephant had walked into the room with me.  Over the course of dinner I worked my way around to the subject of my appearance.  Choosing my words carefully, I explained what is going on.  To my relief, Frank's response was, "Doesn't change the way I think of you."  Within days Kelli was complimenting me on my new clothes. 

I had had some fears about "coming out" in rural Maine, but to my relief I was wrong.  Maine is a state of yankee conservatism.  The credo is still "I might not agree with the way you are living your life but will defend to the death your right to live it that way."  My handyman Ritchie told me I was just adding color to Burlington's already colorful citizenry.

Somewhat wiser, I kept my mad scientist Embassy ID in my pocket for the return to Romania.  At airport check-in, all security checks, and finally at passport control in Bucharest, I presented my passport along with the ID, explaining that the ID photo is more current.  It worked.  I had no unusual incidents. 

A Rainy Afternoon in Bar Harbor

I should have no such odd experiences when I next travel outside Romania.  While in Maine, I went to my attorney to start the legal name change.  By the time I travel to the U.S. again next summer, I will have new passports with correct name and gender.  The charade will be at an end.

On the flight from Baltimore to Detroit, a young Lebanese woman who sat next to me with her 13-month old son struck up a conversation from which it was immediately clear she had taken me as female.  We talked child care and the difficulty of traveling with family.  I got out the vacation photos of me with my son and with my sisters.  As we looked at them, I heard the voice of the stewardess.  "Can I offer you anything to drink, ma'am?"  Wonderful, simply wonderful.



The Timeless Beauty of Fall in Maine



A Bushel and a Peck and Up Around the NEC

It's called the New Embassy Compound, the NEC for short.  It's pronounced like neck.  Carting many bushels and pecks worth of computers, servers, switches, and other boxes of computer stuff took over my life at the end of August.  The U.S. Embassy closed its old location in downtown Bucharest on September 9 and reopened at the NEC in the Baneasa suburb on September 12.  As anyone who has ever moved computer networks for a large organization can tell you, our work was only beginning on September 12.  Only now, at the end of our second week at the NEC, is life beginning to return to normal.  In the course of three weeks, I worked a week of overtime.

For any of my Romanian readers who have seen the NEC and think it an ugly eyesore, a prison compound, or a mini-Pentagon, all I can say is none of us were involved in the architectural design.  There are lots of things we, who work at the Embassy, would have done differently if anyone had asked us.  On the other side of the coin, the old Embassy on Tudor Arghezi street was in a historic building that was beautiful on the outside but decaying, almost decrepit on the inside.  Having a new, modern building to work in is a blessing no matter what its architectural merits.

The best news for me today is that tonight I fly to the U.S. for two weeks of vacation and a reunion with my sisters in Maine.  This will be my first vacation in a year, and I am ready!

So where did I leave my story?  In the retrospective I had just survived my disastrous, abortive coming-out summer of 1990.  Today, in the year 2011, I am less than three months away from beginning the Real Life Experience of coming to the workplace and living my live full-time as Robyn.  While in Maine, I will begin my legal name change through the Maine courts.

There is much still to tell both old and new, but having stolen today's opening lines from Frank Loesser's show tune, I will steal my closing from Pushkin.  At the end of Chapter 3 of Eugene Onegin, just as Onegin appears in the lane, striding towards Tatyana after reading the letter in which she professes her undying love, Pushkin breaks the action -- he wrote and published Eugene Onegin in installments -- writing:

Сегодня, милые друзья,
Пересказать не в силах я;
Мне должно после долгой речи
И погулять и отдохнуть:
Докончу после как-нибудь.

My friends, I need to pause a spell,
And walk, and breathe, before I tell
A story that still wants completing;
I need to rest from all this rhyme:
I'll end my tale some other time.

See you all in October!