How I came to discover the girl within


Thanks to their generous, sharing nature, I have had the chance to read the stories that many of my sisters have posted on the net. Many have come along a very difficult path filled with emotional as well as physical pain. Ladies and Girls you have my heart felt thanks for sharing your stories. Like the others I tell my story here in the hope that it helps someone along their own way.

I was born in 1948. I have one brother who is much older than I. For the first four years of my life we lived in small town in New York State in the USA. It was a nice place to live. There was a store on the corner at the near end of the street, where my brother or mom would take me sometimes to get some bubble gum. Bubble gum was special because each penny package came with a baseball card and I liked the cards very much. I think that was because my brother collected baseball cards. Across the street from the corner store there was an ice-cream store I remember we went there a lot in the summer. Next to the ice-cream store there was a large playground. Some days I would go to the playground early in the morning with my brother or mom and play until lunchtime. My brother had a friend that lived up and across the street from us. His father had built a big electric train set in their attic. He took me over one night to see the trains. That seemed special to me and the trains were really neat! I was dazzled by the glimmer and blinking of the tiny lights in the model railroad. There were at least two or three children that I played with, it seems funny now that I don't remember their names. I started taking an interest in tinkering (as my Dad called it) with things then. My parents quite often found me in the back of various appliances. I don't believe my mother worked then, she was home with me most of the time. When she went somewhere she either took me along or left me with Gramma. I liked staying with Gramma; she read to me, and there was a school next door with a playground where I could go play. On days when Grandad was home we would listen to the radio together, and I would sometimes sit with him while he whittled something out of wood. I remember once that he carved a chain out of a single piece of wood. That was quite remarkable at the time. Around five o'clock each night I would be waiting at the door for Dad to come home. First thing when he came in I would stand on the chair next to the door and we would give each other a hug. Then while he hugged Mom, I would be going through his shirt pocket to see what I could find to play with. He always seemed to carry an interesting assortment of things in his pocket. When I was four, we moved to the country outside of town. We lived in a big old house on an old stone and dirt road. We moved in the summer, and that first summer was full of wondrous surprises. There were fields and woods, streams, and the creek. All filled with great possibilities for exploration and play. I got used to the idea that playmates didn't live next door or across the street. Many days I had no one to play with so I became good at day dreaming and thinking up things to do myself. My parents got a pedal operated tractor for me. I spent several summers pedaling my way up and down the road. My mom used to worry about me a lot because people from town would drive very fast on our road so I had to be very careful to get off the road whenever I heard a car coming. Quite often on weekends we would go to visit my grandparents on my mothers side of the family (my grandfather on my father’s side died long before I was born and his mom lived in a city some distance away). My grandmother kept a large doll on a chair in the bedroom. One afternoon while we were at my grandparent's house I was wandering around the house and ended up in the bedroom looking at the doll. I don’t remember why, but I decided to try on the doll’s dress. I was small and the dress was a little tight, but with a little wiggling around I got it on. I do remember the dress felt very nice and I was quite excited about having it on. I went to the living room to show everyone. I think they were a little shocked at first but then I got some hugs and was told that I was a very cute little girl. Then I was asked to put the dress back on the doll so nothing would happen to it.

Near where we lived there were families that were well off, and other families that were very poor. Our family fit in the middle. All this didn't seem to matter much to the rest of the children and I while we were young. Our parents and the other older people thought such things were very important. When my friends started to get older, they started to think it was important too. The rich folks and the poor folks didn't get along at all; including the children now. That left me out with both. I had been taught and believed that such things shouldn't keep people from being friends, but that made me unpopular with both groups. That was worsened by the notion that I wasn’t a real country boy; I had moved there from town.

I always thought girls were wonderful. I can remember being very in love with a girl in my kindergarten class. She liked me too and we even held hands sometimes like when we sat in a circle to sing. I was crushed when her family moved away. In the third grade, I was in love with my best friend's sister. Her class was in a different room than mine, but we met in the hall before school started to wish each other a good morning and we would make a point of finding each other at lunch. We both took some teasing, but we didn't care. There are two other things that were really nice about this relationship. Her brother, my best friend, had the same first name as me and he thought it was just fine for his sister and I to be in love.

During grade school I belonged to the Cub Scouts. I really enjoyed going to the meetings and working on the projects. When I got home from school I would usually meet some of my friends and play until supper. After supper I would work on schoolwork for a while, then I would either go back outside, or play with some of my gadgets. I had a collection of clocks, motors, parts of radios, etc. While I was in grade school my father quit the construction company he worked for and opened a gas station in town. Some nights after school the bus would let me off at the gas station. There was a trailer park near by and I would usually spend some time there playing with the children that lived there. I always spent some time at the gas station with Dad too; sometimes he would let me help him with things, and others I would just watch. I remember one girl that lived in the trailer park, her first name was nearly the same as mine; I was quite surprised by that when we first met. We got to be friends and played together often. She even taught me to ride a bike, which led to my father buying a bicycle for me. My friendship with her led to my first negative encounter with religion. They were Catholic, and we were Protestant, and for that reason her mother didn't like her playing with me. We decided to be friends anyway.

I started noticing what the girls were wearing when I was ten. The girls I knew wore dresses with full skirts and petticoats. When my mom went shopping I loved having the chance to touch some of the soft things. I spent hours looking through catalogs trying to imagine how it would feel to dress up in all the wonderful things I saw there. No one ever taught or encouraged me to dress up; neither did I ever have any sex education. Where I was brought up people seldom threw anything away. When something wasn’t needed or didn’t fit anymore it was put aside wherever the family kept the things they no longer used. There were only three families close enough for me to visit and I knew where they kept their old things. The closest family had three girls. I was offered the chance to play dress ups several times, but I always declined. I was always very self-conscious about the fact that I really wanted to dress up. I thought if anyone saw me dressed up they would be able to tell how much I liked it and then I would get teased a lot. The oldest of the three girls was my age and she became a very good friend of mine. We played together at least as much as I played with the boys. We day dreamed together planning our futures and tried to figure out ways to make the troubles in the world go away. She also taught me how to look at the world through a girl’s eyes, though I didn’t understand what was going on at the time. In the summer when I was ten I decided to try on some panties. I recalled I was a little scared and pulled the panties up real slow. I remember how light and soft they felt, when the front of the panties touched me they felt wonderful and I got very excited in a way I never had before. I was afraid that someone might come and see me so I quickly took the panties off. From then on I started collecting and experimenting with girl’s clothes. I did not want to steal so I would make secret trades of something from our old things for something from a neighbor’s box of old things. I got real good at finding hiding places for my girl clothes. As time went along I added to my collection. I didn’t wear dresses or full slips because I wanted to be able to get undressed fast if I needed to. I could change my clothes in about ten seconds when I thought someone was coming. I don’t think anyone ever found out about my dressing up, or at least they never said anything if they did. One day while I was dressed in my girl things I had one of the biggest surprises ever. I couldn’t imagine anything so wonderful. I was completely amazed and figured I found the best thing ever. Since I didn’t know anything about sex I thought I had discovered something magical. I figured that either it was a secret that girl’s clothes were magic and I wasn’t supposed to know about it or I was the only one that knew about it. Either way I decided I’d better keep it real secret because I knew I would get picked on a lot if anyone found out. This also made me a little scared. I thought if girls clothes were magic they might actually turn me into a girl. When I did get dressed up I felt bad like I was doing something wrong dressing up in girl’s clothes. So I would take off my girl’s clothes and not do it again for a day or two. Sometimes I would return all the things I collected, but then I would start collecting all over again. Something else was going on too. I really liked being dressed up pretty. I just loved the feel of being in girl’s clothes and I liked the way I looked in them. Anytime I got dressed up a spent lots of time in front of a mirror.

I played with the boys too; the usual baseball, fishing, and so on. The guys I knew teased me a bunch for spending time with girls, but I didn't let that stop me. It seemed to me that girls certainly had better lives than boys in some ways and I was torn between wanting to have and enjoy some of the things girls did, but also not wanting to give up being a boy. I felt bad about the fact that there didn't seem to be any way that I could be like boys in some ways and like girls in others. I was never branded a sissy or anything like that but I wasn't one of the usual macho males either.

We were much more innocent about sex and gender than children now and I had no sisters. I believed for a long time that being a boy or a girl was a matter of how parents chose to raise their child. It seemed quite reasonable that boys or girls could change places if they wanted to and people would let them. I found it particularly touching when I read the story titled Xmastory at the GirlTalk site. The part where the little boy prayed that he could be a girl; I can remember times when I prayed that same prayer. Times when the boys had been particularly mean to me and the girls had been good to me. It wasn't that I really wanted to be a girl; it just seemed better than the way I was since boys weren't allowed to be like girls at all.

So, what was it that I found attractive in a girl's life? To start with, girls could hug, giggle, and cry. Girls also got to dress in very pretty things; boys weren't allowed to be pretty. Girls could be kind and gentle; boys were very limited in expressing there feelings. On the other hand, I enjoyed being strong. I could hit'em long in baseball. I liked to hunt, fish, camp, and I was always building something. I was good at science and always had to know how things worked. All this was clearly boy territory when I was little. I'm glad to see women and girls make the progress they have. We're still stuck.

When I was in middle school I developed a serious interest in electronics. We had a neighbor that was in electronics; he designed and built most of his equipment for his radio hobby. He was also an amateur photographer and developed all his own pictures. I took a great interest in his hobbies and he taught me a lot about them. Sometimes we would talk together about everything from religion to world events. He didn't treat me like a kid, and I liked that. I started spending more time with adults around this time. Their conversation was much more interesting and they would teach me things and answer my questions. There was an appliance shop in town. One day my Dad and I were at the shop and my father reprimanded me for bothering everyone with so many questions. To that the man who owned shop told me "Never to be afraid to ask questions, it's the only way you'll learn things". I was never found to be wanting for a question. We had another neighbor up the road that started teaching me to hunt. I wasn't old enough to carry a rifle, but I went out with him and learned to track and handle the dogs.

One day while I was dressed up something strange happened and the front of my panties were wet. When I looked in my panties the front was covered with something I had never seen before. I had no idea what it was and I was a little scared that there might be something wrong with me. I thought that if I asked Mom or Dad about it they would find out that I liked to dress up so I decided to ask an older boy about the stuff that came out of me. The boy I asked thought it was real funny that I didn’t know anything about sex and he just made fun of me for a few minutes, but he finally stopped and told me about how boys make girl’s pregnant. That was my sex education. After that I started paying attention when people were talking about sex and girls getting pregnant. Most of what I heard lead me to believe that a boy having sex with a girl was a quick way to get into big! trouble. I didn’t want to be a daddy yet, I didn’t want to get VD, and I did not want to hurt a girl. I had heard women talking about how girls got real sick when they were pregnant and that it was very painful for a girl to have a baby. I decided that I would not have sex with a girl until after I was married and then I would only get her pregnant if she knew what would happen and wanted to anyway. This was tough in high school. I fell deeply in love a few times as I went through school and twice it ended up bad because I wasn’t willing to take a chance on getting my girl friend pregnant. I was very surprised; I would never have guessed that girls would expect a boy to try and have sex with them.

When I was in the eighth grade something very special happened. I didn’t think it was special at the time; in fact I was quite scared. I noticed that I was starting to "blossom". The nipples of my breasts were getting fuller and I could feel little lumps forming under them. I thought all my dressing up was catching up with me. Before this I had started giving up the notion that girl’s clothes were magic. When this happen though it was the first! thing I thought of. I was sure that I was turning into a girl. In another way though I was somewhat pleased with my new found "femininity". Fear was the driving emotion though; I didn’t want to be a girl. I kept this to my self for months; worrying all the time because they continued to grow. There was never any question of this being fat; at 186 CM tall and 67 KG there wasn’t a gram of fat on me anywhere. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and very reluctantly showed my Mom what was happening to me and express my fear about turning into a girl. I think she was set back a little because when she first looked me over the look on her face told me she thought I was really blossoming too. She said she didn’t think it was a problem and the lumps would probably go away in a little while. A couple more months went by and they were still growing. At this point Mom took me to the doctor. The doctor looked me over and said that it wasn’t a problem. Some boys had this happen at this time in their lives and they would go away with time. Well Mom stopped worrying and so did I. They continued to slowly grow until I was about sixteen. Then they stopped growing, but they never got smaller either.

The high school I attended was very progressive; in that they had a technical electronics program and the instructor was determined to turn out engineers. The course took three years to complete at three hours a day. After I graduated from high school, I went back one more year to complete the electronics course. Sometimes my best friend and I would pack some provisions and go off deep into the woods and camp out for a couple of days. I remember one time; we decided to go all out. We loaded a small wagon with a tent, food, water, fishing and hunting gear, lights, a radio, and anything else we could find that would be good to have on a safari. The weather turned bad so we were only gone about 24 hours, but we had a great time.

While I was in high school my collection of girl clothes grew considerably. I collected things appropriate for my age but I only collected certain things. Panties, pettipants, half slips, petticoats and skirts were the things I collected. From time to time I thought about collecting full slips, bras, and dresses, and I even tried on some of these. They never seemed quite right though. I knew about female impersonators, but that never appealed to me. I had no desire to be or appear to be a woman. Sometimes I thought about experimenting with makeup and maybe a wig, but that didn’t hold any attraction so I didn’t. I thought I was just a guy that liked to wear some girl clothes and that was it. Though I certainly knew I had to keep this a secret I never felt guilty about it. During high school I earned some money through part time jobs and I started to actually buy some things for myself. I liked the things I dressed up in to look nice; when I looked in the mirror I didn’t want to see a rag muffin. I was getting tired of only having things that others had thrown away. A typical outfit was panties, pettipants, half-slip, petticoat, white shirt, and skirt.

Mom and Dad both worked and my brother was grown up, and out on his own; I had lots of time to myself. I really enjoyed building things. I was always collecting bits of this and pieces of that; collecting materials against the day they would come in handy for something I was building. I built lots of different things; at least once a year I would try my hand at building some sort of shack, shed, or club house. Vehicles were favorites too; I built three different motorized contraptions that actually worked in varying degrees. I photographed everything and when I was done I would sit at a little bench I made to work on electronic stuff. Favorite things to build were those that flashed, blinked, buzzed, beeped, counted, and so on.

My girlfriends (not romantic but regular friends) were always very important to me. They were more caring, honest, and intelligent than the guys. I also always wanted to help girls anyway I could. Even when I was little playing with the neighbor girls I was frequently playing the roll of the knight, hero, or good guy that came to the rescue. A problem I ran into along the way was that some girls didn’t understand a boy that just wanted to be their friend. I was asked by one girl in my freshman year if I was gay (actually that word wasn’t used much then). I didn’t think I was and told her so, but that got me thinking. Though it only came back to mind on rare occasion it wasn’t fully resolved until years later.

With all the great things I had to do my best, most favorite, was getting dressed up. Quite often I would be engaged in some activity or other and suddenly realize that I had a chance to dress up. I would quickly figure when or if anyone would be home and if I had enough time. Most of the time I ended up running as fast as I could to the house. One thing that impressed me early on about girls was how they always kept themselves nice and clean. Whenever I was going to dress up the first thing I would do was take a bath. Though as need requires I do and did get as dirty as any other male, I’ve always enjoyed being clean and smelling nice.

While in high school I started thinking about getting married. There was a girl I had known a long time and we started going steady in our Junior year. We did the usual things together like movies, bowling, dances, and picnics. We decided we should wait until I had finished college before we would get married. She, unfortunately, was one of those "tracked" into the homemaker role and was neither interested in nor prepared for college then. She went off to one of those "business" schools while I went to a two-year technical college. While I was in college she finished her one-year program and went to work to start saving. During my time at school I became more aware of gay people than I had been before. I decided I better figure out if I was gay. As I got to know some gay people I found some that were willing to talk with me about being gay. I sort of tuned in to my feelings and gave myself a chance to acknowledge being gay if that’s what I was. It took a while, but in the end I concluded I was not gay. This left me feeling more confused since I was still very much in the dark about why it was I enjoyed dressing up. As I came to the end of my two-year program I was thinking that a four-year degree was what I really needed, but my girl was getting impatient to begin our life together. When I realized that our marriage was near I felt I had to let her know about my dressing up. I thought I would be able to quit, but I wasn’t sure; she had to be told. It took several weeks talking all around it, but it finally came out. She wasn’t really shocked because I brought her to it gently. She seemed somewhat understanding, but thought I would grow out of it after we were married a while. I thought so too. When I finished my two-year program I got my first job as a technician in a city still within driving distance to our hometown. Three months later we were married. I continued dressing and my wife didn’t really like it, but she didn’t complain either. I think the main reason she didn’t was that in all other respects our life together was wonderful. We had decided before we were married, based on watching the problems of others, that we would wait until we were well established in our life together before we had children.

During these first few years we were quite prosperous and I started my collection of petticoats. I collected several along with panties, pettipants and half-slips. I collected several skirts as well. I would dress two or three nights each week after work. After our fifth year we had saved enough to buy our first house. The new financial burden led me to conclude that I had to finish a four year degree. I started night school. Three nights a week I went from work to school and got home about 11:00 PM. With the homework load this led to a serious degradation of our personal life together. I think the fact that we didn’t have children was a major factor in allowing us to make it through. In our seventh year I was about half way done with school and I lost my job. It took me a couple of months to find another one, but I wasn’t in school and I wanted to wait until I had settled in and proven myself to my new employer before I went back to school. In our tenth year I went back to school. Through this first ten years my wife had a variety of jobs. She could never seem to find something she really liked and she would grow weary of staying at home very quickly. From the time I started school my dressing fell off to about once a week. There were just to many things I had to do; no time for what I wanted to do. When I first went back to school I started and continued my personal research into what made me tick. Any time I wasn’t in class or working on homework I was studying anything that might give me a clue. There wasn’t much written on the related subjects. In fact the most honest and factual thing I read was that they didn’t know much about guys like me because we weren’t visible, so to say, and we never came forward to talk about what was up with us. The few things that were written seemed to be written in total ignorance by people desperate to publish or at least include something on the subject in a larger work. They apparently felt confident that their "findings" wouldn’t be contradicted because no one knew anything different. After I got back to school, time was once again at a high premium. My new job was far from where we lived so between school and work I was spending a couple hours a day on the road. We had talked that we wanted a larger house before we started our family so we started looking for a place closer to work and school that would be better for raising children. We found a place and moved. Over the course of the next three years I completed my four year degree in electronics. Once again the company I was working for was in hard times. This time I decided to leave before I got laid off.

While I was in night school for the second round we started having serious discussions about starting a family. I was having second thoughts. I hadn’t been able to find out much about myself and I had doubts about if I would be a good parent. I hadn’t suffered much as a result of my dressing up, but I didn’t want to influence my child in that way. I was also concerned because I would need to give up dressing, at least anytime my child might be around. One thing I did know by this time was that giving it up completely wasn’t an option. At three times through our marriage I purged all my clothes and tried hard to give up my dressing. It never worked I always ended up feeling resentful and otherwise bad. I was raised with strong doses of positive thinking and a positive self-image (though we didn’t use those terms then). I knew I wasn’t a bad person and concluded that dressing was just part of me and that was that. I permanently gave up purging because purging was bad for me. It’s been long enough now that I feel confident in saying that. Especially since my purges were always directed by the desires of my wife, not me. I finally came to a point in my life where I concluded that I could be a good father and I would be able to deal with sparse dressing. We have a son; he is sixteen now. Raising a child to sixteen is a story in itself, but one with which I think many of you are familiar. As far as I know my son has no inclination toward dressing and is in most respects an ordinary teen. I say most respects because he has talents and aptitudes (math and writing) that set him apart in some ways. I find it ironic that my wife has generally had a harder time coping with parenting than I have. I think that’s because I went in with eyes wide open knowing exactly what was ahead.

As I look back now, I can see that there had always been things that pointed to the little girl inside me. So obvious now, but I had no idea until a year ago. Oh I certainly matured; some would say I am a little on the stuffy side. Those in my family and close friends though got to know a little of my other side. As I grew through my teen years and into adulthood I never gave up my love of things like watching cartoons and playing simple board games. I was aware of these things, but I explained it to others and myself as not wanting to become so grown up that I couldn’t have fun. One thing on this simple line that hadn’t occurred to me until lately was that the cartoons I liked and the games I enjoyed were those for young children specially those for girls. Most of the cartoons that have been produced recently hold no attraction for me since they have primarily violent themes. I really enjoyed the 70’s when cartoons like Rainbow Bright and Strawberry Shortcake were running. When the Care Bears were on I not only watched the cartoons, I bought myself a Care Bear stuffy too (Tender Heart Bear).

Another way the youth of my inner self was evident was in the way I dressed. I always sought out fashions that looked as much as possible like those worn by girls in the 50s. The clothes that were closest to those worn by the girls I knew while I was a young boy. At the time the only thing that occurred to me was that those fashions went with petticoats. I collected very little of the styles worn by women of that era and rarely wore them, but it never occurred to me that I should or to even think about why I wasn’t. Another clue I missed was in the things that I did while I was dressed. A favorite was watching cartoons, but I think the most telling was that sometimes I would pick up a stuffy and hug it close while I would sort of get lost in how nice it was to cuddle my stuffy.

Through my occupation I was always aware of developments in computer technology. When the net started taking shape it was useful for some aspects of work, but I never thought of "going on-line" from home. As people started signing up for the services I looked it over and concluded that if I wanted to read the paper it was cheaper and easier to buy a copy. So I continued to see no reason to have access to the net from home. Well just a little over a year ago now someone gave me an old (the 33.6s just came out) 14.4 modem. At the time the $20 per month unlimited access was becoming available so I figured I had to give it a try. The first night of surfing was just sort of cruising around getting the scope of things. I was really amazed at the wide variety of information, entertainment, etc. available. The next thing that occurred to me was that this might be a way to further my research into myself so I went to the search engines and got started. The next month or so was a wondrous time. Lots of sorting and sifting to do, but clearly lots more good information than I ever found in the books at any library. Along the way I found Petticoat Pond; I visited there several times and I had a hard time figuring out what group of people the site was intended to serve. It just sort of felt like the right place to make first contact. With a certain amount of trepidation I wrote to the web master of the site, Tessy. I wrote just one brief question; "Is this a site where it’s okay for a straight guy that likes petticoats to visit?" The reply was yes, but I didn’t write again for a long time. Instead I contributed some petticoat icons and such via snail mail. One day when I went to Petticoat Pond I found on the front page, in big red letters, a note for ME! The message was simple; that Tessy wanted to talk to me and since she had no way to reply to my snail mail that wouldn’t work. Well, I had come a long way; I couldn’t go back, so I sent Tessy another e’mail. Over the next few weeks I came to understand that Tessy really cares about people like me and I can trust her. In some of the notes I sent to Aunt Tessy I expressed to her my concerns about trying to figure out what sort of person I was inside. In one of her replies Tessy concluded: "I see you as about nine years old..." Wow, that set me back in my chair for a moment. I wasn’t insulted or anything; I had just never considered such a possibility. I recall that I smiled to myself as I considered Tessy’s view of me. Though I didn’t fully understand, in my heart I knew she was right. I also knew I was finally on the path to really understanding my inner self.

Over the next several weeks I gave a lot of time to allow the girl inside me to "express herself". This was one of the most joyous experiences of my life. Though new to me now I felt very comfortable with my newly discovered aspect. I re-experienced feelings and motivations I hadn’t since I was a child. For the first time this part of my life became clear. Indeed Liesel felt so natural to be a part of me because her aspect of me had always been with me. One of the first things I decided was that Liesel should have a proper name and I spent several days before deciding and I felt a wonderful sense of closure when I named "my girl" Liesel Siobhan Gulden. The essence of joy is felt in the giddy anticipation of simple things a girl cherishes like doing something helpful for a loved one or sending a card to a dear friend. The girl part of me was soaring in the clouds when I declared her name. There is a magical quality to this new existence I have. Experiencing the wondrous nature of Liesel’s approach to life while having, as needed, the ability to draw on my adult life’s education and experience. That’s part of why Liesel feels so natural as part of me. There is no pretext, I am who I am; a well integrated human that happens to be part man and part little girl. Some "primitive" cultures refer to people like me as having two spirits. In a way it does seem like that, but if I have two spirits it’s more like siamese twins than individuals.

It felt strange when I went shopping for a wig for Liesel. Since I wasn’t a woman inside there hadn’t been a need before. After I discovered Liesel there was a need for one of those classic little girl hairstyles that Liesel would enjoy. Then she needed Mary Janes, sneakers, tights, knee socks, hair ribbons and so on. I got some nice blouses too since Liesel wouldn’t feel right in a boy shirt like I used to wear with my skirts. Then I realized I had to do something about some of the hair that covers most of my body. I knew I couldn’t just shave it all off because that would be a very visible change and raise lots of questions from my son. I did decide though that some accommodation could be made for Liesel’s sake, especially for camp. Liesel was so happy as she watched herself appear as my hair fell away; a simple thing to be sure, but none the less important to her.

Though my wife has always known about my dressing she doesn’t know about Liesel being a little girl. She knows Liesel’s name because I’ve shown her a few pages of Liesel’s web site, but I haven’t told her that Liesel is ten years old. I’m bringing her to it gently. My wife makes dolls and back before Christmas I was allowing Liesel to "show through" a little bit and she was showing particular interest in one of the dolls my wife was making as a Christmas gift. As it turned out one evening, my wife came to me and handed me the doll announcing "I guess we can keep her". Liesel was so happy she cried a little after my wife walked away. I think she suspects that the girl part of me is quite young. I keep Liesel’s things (toys, coloring books, etc.) put away so they won’t be obvious to my son, but one day while my wife was looking for something else she came across Liesel’s American Girl books. I was there, but she didn’t say a word she just noted what they were and went on about her business. Mostly though, my wife doesn’t want to know or be involved so I only tell her something if she asks.

About a month after Camp in the Spring of 1999 I had received some pictures from camp. Since my son was not home, I took them out and sat in the living room to look them over. My wife was also in the room reading. As I looked through the pictures, my wife asked what I was looking at. I was sort of expecting she might ask so I told her they were pictures from camp. She then asked if she could see them and I reminded her that she told me she didn't want to know about such things and I did not want to upset her. She replied that she didn't think they could be any worse than other things she had seen. With that I gathered up the pictures and took the pictures to her. As she looked through them I explained a little about each one. She was done looking through them in just a couple of minutes; then she handed them back. There was no discussion or comment at all. Since then things don't seem to have changed between us; so even though I have no real idea of what she thought of what she learned I am taking the positive view that at least she was not terribly upset by it. If she had any questions before about the nature of Liesel many were certainly answered as she looked through those pictures. The pictures included pictures of Liesel in her school uniform, in her ballet practice outfit, and in a play outfit skipping rope.

Copyright © by Liesel Siobhan

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