We left the doctors office and went to a local ice cream shop. After we had gotten our ice cream and sat down, Mom started explaining to me what Dr. Williams had come up with during our session.

“After explaining to Jill what I had observed and her actually seeing you today, she agreed with my initial assessment of gender dysphoria, although they changed the name to gender identity disorder. She will, however need to see you quite a bit more before actually passing a diagnoses and subsequent recommendations on to me about treatment.” Mom said, before scooping a spoonful of her chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream into her mouth.

“What does that mean for me?” I asked.

“Well,” Mom took another bite of the her ice cream. Rather than let mine melt, I did the same. “If she determines that a diagnoses of gender identity disorder is accurate, we could enroll you in school as Emma, and you, if you wanted to, could begin the process of officially living as Emma full time.” I must have had a large smile appear on my face, because mom had a huge grin appear as well.

Mom backed the Honda into the garage and shut off the engine. I opened the door and watched as Jacob Anderson walked up the driveway. Mom was already out of the car and walking down the driveway to go check the mail.

“Hello, Mrs. Fisher.” He said, stopping half way up the drive, and looking at me.

“Hey Jacob, What brings you by?”

“I was wondering if Justin wanted to come by and play some games on the Playstation.” Mom looked over Jacob’s head and looked at me. I shook my head at her.

“Justin hasn’t been feeling well the last few days and has been stuck in bed. I’ll tell him you stopped by though. Maybe in a few days he will want to go out and do something.”

“Oh. Tell him that I hope he feels better, and to swing by when he can.”

“I’ll pass that on.” Jacob finally saw me and smiled. I could have sworn my knees started shaking when he looked at me.

“Thanks, I’ll see you around, Mrs. Fisher.” Jacob smiled at me one last time and then went back the way he came. Mom walked back into the garage and hit the button to close the garage door. I stayed where I was until the garage door had closed.

“Earth to Emma…” Mom said. I was still staring at the garage door. I slowly turned my head toward her. “Oh, yeah. Jacob stopped by, said he hopes you feel better.” I giggled, as I had heard the whole conversation.

“I feel better now that I can be who I am supposed to be.” I walked around the car and into the house. “I just wonder how some people that we know will take me being Emma.” Mom sat her purse on the counter and then turned and looked at me.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I think that you will find that most people are accepting of you, Emma. You’ll probably have a boyfriend one day, that won’t care that you were once a boy because from what I can tell you are all girl inside and have been for quite some time. You know what we should do?” I tilted my head. I had no idea what we should do.

“What should we do?”

“Paint your nails.” I blinked.

“Paint my nails?” Mom smiled and nodded.

“Yeah. If your going to show off your toes,” She pointed at my feet. My toes were sticking out of the end of my sandals. “We should paint them. Let’s go find something more casual for you to wear and then we’ll paint your nails.” Mom turned and went toward my bedroom and I followed her. She went right to the closet and pulled out a teal colored polo dress and laid it on the bed. The dress had white buttons, and white piping along the collar and the hem of the dress. Mom looked at the dress, rubbed her chin and then looked at me. “Turn around so I can unbutton you.” I turned around and Mom unbuttoned my dress. “Hang the dress back up in your closet, and put the slip in your hamper. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I slid the dress off, and placed it on the same hanger that I had assumed that it had come off of that morning. Pulling the slip from my waist, I made a hook shot right into the hamper. I reached down and picked up the dress. It felt like the other polos I owned but seemed softer. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but it did. I pulled the dress over my head, and then buttoned up the placket the same way I would have done on my polos. I looked at my self in the mirrored closet door. The little girl from this morning was looking back at me and her eyes were shining. The brown ribbon didn’t go with the dress, but I had a feeling that mom was going to change the ribbon to white or teal. I slipped my feet back into my sandals as I had never liked running around barefoot. Mom appeared in my door way as I was getting ready to head back to the kitchen. Mom followed me to the kitchen and had me sit in one of the chairs at the table, place my hands on the table and was about to paint the nails on my left hand when the phone rang