To put it bluntly, I did not enjoy even a moment of the slightly more than three hour trip home, all I wanted to do was scream.

The problem was that we kept hitting crosswinds, and every time we did, the helicopter would rock a bit, causing me to shift in the seat. That caused a certain very tender part of my anatomy to rub against the surface of the seat through my jeans and underwear.

Let's just say that, by the time we landed at their home base near our camps, I was in a fair bit of pain. No, make that a lot of pain.

It took both Sammi and Wesley to help me to get out of the chopper, plus Darren who apparently had been paying attention to things. Huh, not only is he a good pilot and mechanic for these helicopters, he knows when something isn't right with a passenger he is carrying.

I wobbled toward mom and held on to her like a drowning person might cling to a life preserver, even to the point of crying on her shoulder.

I guess it's time to give you some info about my family's history.

Hmmm... I think I'll start with mom's side, as there's more of interest to tell there, well, except for one thing, I suppose.

Mom's mom was the ninth of eleven children, seven girls, four boys. One boy and one girl followed after my maternal grandmother's birth.

From what I've been told, my maternal great-grandmother was raised in a "big family" environment, albeit one that was rather rough. She was a Great Depression baby, born in July of 1934; fifth of eight children, only three reached adulthood, five dying from various illnesses.

So when she reached the age where she could marry, it was only to find that she had no interest in any of the men in that little town. It wasn't until several years after that that she met her husband to be and they set out on spawning a veritable horde of children.

She was a rough woman, a woman of her times. She drank and smoked heavily, and died from stage four lung cancer at age 53.

So my maternal grandmother grew up with a lot of other kids around her, only two in the direct family being younger.

She met her husband to be, a man returning from his third six month stint in Afghanistan after being hit in the leg by flying shrapnel.

My mom was the only child of their marriage. About a year after mom was born, my grandma had a miscarriage that landed her in a hospital ward for nearly a week. The miscarriage had also triggered a major hemorrhage, and she was told she should not have any more children.

My mom's aunts and uncles eventually settled down, some here, some in other areas of Ontario, some out of the province. Between them, the ten others produced thirty-seven children, and most of those people are adults now, having their own children.

At the last count, mom has thirty-seven cousins as I've said, and those cousins have birthed more than fifty children between them.

Mom and dad both grew up in our rotating camps, my mom being in one of the main families, dad being on the fringe of things.

I don't know anything about my dad's grandparents, except that dad has one living great-uncle, the man for whom I was named.

Dad is the middle child of three, one older sister, one younger brother. Both siblings have married, both have at least one child.

Now for the item of interest. Several years ago, I think I had just turned ten, a child who had been raised male left home when his father found out he was at least crossdressing and possibly thinking of finding some way to get access to female hormones.

The child's mother had died a few years before, barely thirty years old and killed in just a few short seconds by an aneurysm or stroke. So the child didn't have anyone else in the house that might help him, there being no other children born there before the mother's death.

Somehow the child managed to flee from the father, and using every bit of skill and lore he had, reached the Canadian border. When he spoke to the officer at the crossing he used, he mentioned that his father was likely chasing him and there were no living relatives to help him.

The customs officer became worried, especially when he saw the bruising on the back of the child's neck where the father had hit him. The customs officer asked the child if he would allow himself to be examined, adding that a woman would be present if that would help at all.

The child thought about it for a moment, then agreed. The examination was done a short time later, strictly a visual one, but that was more than enough to convince them the child would not be safe in his father's hands. Temporary asylum was granted at that time.

That was when dad's sister entered the fray. She was a social worker at the time, working out of an office in Windsor, Ontario. The boy's case landed on her desk two days after he had reached the border crossing, with notations and photos from the guards who examined him.

She was appalled at the images that she was seeing, the marks on the child's body were quite nasty. In several places on the child's back, there were scabbed areas which looked rather serious and a doctor, who had examined the child later that first evening, had stated were most likely the marks of a belt buckle hitting edge on, thus leaving significant entry wounds. Then there were the layers of bruises from the belt itself.

There were also other marks that looked whiplike? The doctor's report stated they were likely from switches stripped to the bare wood.

The doctor also stated that there were at least a dozen old fractures in various locations, he noted most of those were likely defensive injuries.

Aunt Jocelyn was in front of a court judge within three hours of seeing the file. It didn't take more than a brief moment to convince the judge that the child was at very high risk if he was returned home and for the judge to further grant an order to provide interim care for the child.

Aunt Jocelyn stayed on top of that case for three months. The child was lucky in one sense that he ended up in a home where he was treated well, but there was no building of long term trust there, and it quickly became evident that he didn't feel safe in revealing himself to them.

Aunt Jocelyn checked in on him, usually once a week during that time period, and this is where things took another turn. For some reason, the child felt better, safer, whenever Aunt Jocelyn was present, and he eventually asked if he could be placed with her instead.

She went before the judge again, this time on the Tuesday following that meeting, and they talked for more than an hour. The end result was that the child would be transferred to her custody on the following weekend, giving him time to say his goodbyes to the foster family.

To say that that farewell was a tearful time would be an understatement. They had kept him safe, even if they had never truly known him.

The temporary custody slowly changed to a permanent arrangement about six months later, when she and her husband adopted him.

A few months after that, her office downsized and she was out of work.

It took about six weeks of living off saved income before someone from the band up north contacted her, offering employment.

She jumped on it, informing her husband and within two weeks, they were settled in a small but comfy house in the current camp.

That child, my cousin Ambrose/Amber, came out within days of arriving as being two-spirited and was happy to live either way at any time.

Aunt Jocelyn became our little community's social worker/counsellor, helping anyone that needed it.

I guess that gives you a fair amount of the history of my family. I'm sorry if I didn't cover everything, I have quite a lot of relatives.

Well, as I said before, I was holding on to mom for dear life when I felt two more pairs of arms wrapping themselves around me. A quick glance over my right shoulder revealed Aunt Jocelyn, another glance over the left shoulder showed my cousin Amber was there.

In a way, I'm really glad Amber was there, because I needed to talk to someone who might understand what I was experiencing. Now, Amber is a young adult, about five years older than me, so she had been at her university in Toronto when she found out what was happening.

She had actually come back here, even though her summer classes were still in session, to be here for me. That just made me cry even more.

I suppose about another ten or fifteen minutes passed before the watery eyes stopped leaking and I could face them all.

We talked for a few more minutes before I felt like I could walk from where we were over to the cars that were waiting for us. I rode with mom and dad, Sammi and Wesley were sharing the back seat with me. Amber and Aunt Jocelyn, plus a few others, had their own cars.

Once we were back at the camp, I nodded to Amber and the two of us walked off to a spot with a park bench under a big old maple tree.

I knew Amber's history, heck, everyone in the camp knew it within a week of her having arrived here nearly seven years ago.

"Amber, if you didn't already know, the doctors had to remove my penis, as it was too badly damaged to function, and they fashioned a vagina using some of the colon tissue. That bit may be female, but I'm still Will up here and here," I took a moment to point at my heart and my head. "But I had this really weird dream recently," I described the dream/not dream to her, "And I feel that I will need to be female sometimes."

Now that might not have been the best way to start a conversation, but if anyone could understand me at all at that point, it would be Amber.

Amber and I talked for nearly two hours before mom yelled at me to get my butt home if I wanted to have my supper. I was up and running like a shot! You can call me late for just about anything and I won't care. The one exception to that is meals; I hate missing even one.

The next ten days passed fairly quickly, I spent most of my time either with Sammi or with Amber, sometime both of them together. There was a lot of discussion about my feelings and what I had experienced in that dream/not dream, but no firm conclusions were reached.

A week after I returned home, Amber had to return to Toronto to continue her summer sessions or forfeit the possible passing grade. We promised to keep in contact with each other, a promise I intended to keep. It wouldn't be hard, we'd been in close contact for almost two years. By close contact, I mean we had each other's emails and I had her cell phone number, although I would only use that in an emergency.

Shortly after two PM on the tenth day after my return, a strange car parked near our small house, then an older man stepped out of it.

I had seen pictures here and there of Simon Leapfoot the younger. He was now here in the flesh, my training was about to begin.