My father broke the snowblower last night and had to call the repair man to fix it. He said he'd be here this morning.

When I heard a truck pull up to the house I ran to the window to see if it was the FedEx man; I was expecting a new computer to arrive any day now. I had forgotten about the repairman who was supposed to arrive. Instead of immediately returning to my book I lingered by the window for another moment, curious to see who would emerge from the truck. Sometimes those gruff men are handsome.

Then he, no, she, came out. A woman? I was surprised. My parents had referred to whoever was in that truck as a "he" the night before, and even I was guilty of gender stereotypes. My curiosity was ignited; her obviously blonde hair pulled into a ponytail with a pink sweatband on top of her head served as a pleasant irony. She made her way up the driveway and I could really get a good look at her...make up was thick, eyebrows were penciled on...but wait. Her face. It was not soft and subtle like a woman's should be. It was harsh and loud. Her nose, her jaws, the way her eyes were set in her face, it was all wrong. I felt guilty for thinking about it. I'd like to think that I was accepting of other people yet here I stood gawking at her like a zoo animal. Maybe it was not how it appeared. Maybe she really was a woman.

I stepped away from the window and returned to my book, soon forgetting the strange sight I had witnessed. After awhile I walked out into the living room. The repair uh, person, had left.
"Mom, I said. "Was that really a woman?"
She shook her head "No. She's living as a woman now. She was a man before...when we called her the first time to repair something."
Wow, I thought. That was so incredibly brave. I had seen specials on television where transgendered people talked of feeling trapped in their own bodies; the concept had amazed me. Imagine being born a man but feeling you were meant to be a girl, and feeling it so strongly that you decided to permanently alter you body, inevitably alienate those around you and begin living a completely new life. Sara, as the repairwoman was now being called, had a lot of guts to go out into the world, especially in a business dominated by men where she would be dealing with commonplace families in a small town, and pursue what she felt to be right. But she was good at her job, she was good at fixing things. My mother claimed it didn't bother her, and perhaps it didn't, but I knew it had to on some level. Maybe because Sara possessed a skill to fix the snowblower was she less severe in my mother's eyes. I almost can't blame my mother for thinking the way she does. She was raised in a strict Roman Catholic household by Italian immigrants where gays went to hell and women were virgins on their wedding day. She never attended college and topics like transgendered individuals were not discussed when she was my age. As much as she and I disagree we both came to the same conclusion about Sara: she would not have willingly chose that path just for the fun of it. There must have been something so disturbing, so agitating, so unbearable about being a man that the only option was to take hormones and live as a member of the opposite sex, a markedly more "obvious" lifestyle than the one before. And perhaps the pain of living a lie was so great that it was worth the stares, comments and questions. What a brave person.