If you reached the end, the final end of the final rope, and could take a mulligan, would you?

I was looking at a photo of a much younger Irene Trainer, a husky, bearded man at her side and an infant in her arms. She was young. Pretty. Smiling like a spring morning. I started to cry, and somehow completely forgot that Mom was on duty. “I . . . I . . . Oh, Mom, it’s so awful!”

Moose looked uncomfortable. He knew – like I knew – that a week or two away wasn’t going to cure what was eating me up. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.

It wasn’t our way.

Sometimes you have to roll the hard six . . . without loading the dice.

“I know almost everything they say about lawyers,” he responded. “We make up most of the jokes ourselves. But what do they say about linguists?”

Kurtz tried, but she couldn’t keep from laughing. Which proved to be almost as contagious as vomiting on a plane.

I sneezed explosively; by happy coincidence, the sound bore an uncanny resemblance to the word, “bullshit.”

“Are you sayin’ my mini dress and go-go boots are impractical?”

“They're practical, girl. For certain, ah, pursuits.”

“Jogging not being among them,” I agreed ruefully. “Especially since our hosts don’t understand underwear.”

Janet snorted. Then giggled. “You might catch a few eyes,” she agreed.

I pulled the front door open with a jerk, surprising an imposing man with a completely bald head just as he was about to hit the door again. “If you say anything about knockers, you’re a dead man!” I growled.

I reached into my purse and flipped him my drivers’ license. “That’s me,” I said. “Or was, up until a month ago. I have sixty years of memories to go with the photo. If I was scammed, the scammers are the functional equivalent of an advanced species. And there’s no way that I could ‘delude’ myself into a working knowledge of Old English, Norman French, Greek, Classical Latin, Church Latin and Hochdeutch, with a smattering of other languages besides.”

“That girl juice IS scramblin’ your brains. You’re nuts!”

There are days when you can see your whole life in a coffee cup, I guess. I certainly could, today.

“Holy macaroni, you’ve got lady parts?”

I was starting to think that a Distinguished Professor of Linguistics ought to be able to come up with something more penetrating, more insightful, or at very least more likely to generate an informative response from others. Not that my use of “what” as an interrogative pronoun was in any way improper, of course. I was just surrounded by idiots.

He took the step anyway, and my finger went down on the bear spray. Which, it turns out, is a bad idea around a campfire. Who knew?

A trans woman faces the loss of the love of her life.

The party was sprawling down the lawn towards the harbor, splashes of bright colors against blue skies, scudding white clouds and a crystal clear view of the Boston skyline. It reminded me of the dream I had taken across the threshold into morning. It had been years since I had seen that dreamscape, but there it was, whole and healed and perfect: me, making a graceful dive from a wooden pier into a deep, pristine lake, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, pine forests and the clearest air in the world. Wearing a lime-green one-piece and curves that were, finally, all my own.

“Give it time. This is all coming at you so fast. And you’re still sick, and you’re dealing with Iain. If there’s something there, let it grow at its own pace, and don’t tie yourself in knots if everything isn’t wrapped up in a bow by lunchtime. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “What would I do without you?”

She laughed and said, “that’s easy. You would think too much and you would worry yourself silly. You’re in lockdown with a good looking guy who wants to kiss you. Just enjoy it!”

I have amazing friends.

He continued to glare at me, until suddenly his expression changed completely and he simply looked like he’d been hit by a locomotive. “Fi IS saving the world, jackass,” I said conversationally. “And you’d be the first to agree that the world can spare a lawyer or five. So stop being stupid, will you?”

“It’s like one of those bad dreams, where you can see a train go off the rails, or a car careening into a group of people, and you try to cry out, or move, but you can’t.”

I slipped back into the apartment that had been my sanctuary for these incredible months of change, and suddenly, so very suddenly, wasn’t. Life was just coming at me too quickly.

“You know about hell, I suppose?” she asked.

I thought of my upbringing and said, “It’s been mentioned.”

She responded, “I expect they’ll give you a refresher course.” I could only nod.

“Dorothy was a child, and she missed her home. Her Aunty Em. I left home when I was 21, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back even to visit. It’s not home anymore. And I’ll be honest: I’ve always thought Dorothy was an idiot for going back.”

She cocked an eyebrow in question and I said, “Have you been to Kansas?”