December 2021 Christmas Holidays Story Contest Entry

How fresh is the meatloaf?”
“I believe it was mooing yesterday.”
“Let’s go with the meatloaf, some green beans and the loaded baked potato.”
“I’ll get that for you sir.”
“Thank you.”

Mr. Thomas always sat with a group of two other older men. They would have been considered “honorable members of the community” but they had been pranksters since the mid 1960’s and never slowed down until Mr. Johnny, the oldest, broke his hip during something that involved a pig and the mayor’s car. It either helped or hindered that Mr. Thomas was the mayor’s father.
The three were sweet old guys who would invite me to sit with them—and I did if there wasn’t a morning rush.
“I have a grandson who’d love to meet you,” Mr. Thomas would say every few weeks. He has stated it a few more times after Thanksgiving.
“She’s not interested in your basement-dwelling grandkid, Paul.”
“He doesn’t live in a basement, Tony. It’s an apartment in Nashville.”
“He in the city?” Mr Johnny asked.
“Yes.”
“He workin’?”
“College.”
“He either in a basement or in a dorm.” Mr. Johnny scoffed.
“What’ the difference?” Reverend Al piped up as he grabbed a biscuit off of the table. He wasn’t exactly a man of the cloth—he had just been marred so many times that it was said he officiated his own wedding.
“The kid’s trying to get up into the world. Spread his wings, you know?”
“Yes sir,” I replied as I walked over to Reverend Al and filled up his coffee cup.
“So, you wanna meet him?”
“Perhaps you can bring him in sometime.”
“Careful, Nikki. He’s already got the invitations ready for the wedding.”
“You gonna marry them, Al?”
“Let me get your orders in for you,” I replied in order to leave the conversation.

While other members of my class left our small west Tennessee town I, along with a few other stragglers, stuck around. Some hung around because they needed money for school, others decided to just settle down and start their own lives. The remainders, like me, didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives so instead of sallying forth into the great wide open decided to play it safe and not do anything crazy.

My parents were okay with me living at home, in the same room I had grown up in as long as I didn’t do anything stupid…like TP’ing Thomas Park (Mr. Thomas asked me to be the driver for that endeavor). There were days when Dad would ask me if I had any thoughts about what I wanted to since I was approaching twenty and my brothers had all left home at early ages.
Adam, the oldest, had left for the seminary when I was eight and became a missionary in Africa
Seth, the second born, joined the army right after graduation—after he had a blowout with Adam and Dad. I was twelve when the carnage occurred.
Daniel, the laidback one, took a trip to Seattle and started working for Starbucks—I was a sophomore in High School then.

The last of the children was Nicholas, or, to avoid firestorms, “Nick”, did not have a pleasant time in elementary school as she didn’t understand why her reflection looked so weird and why she had to like girls.

Junior high was no better as the teachers really didn’t know what do. Nick, now calling themselves “Nikki” wasn’t breaking any rules—there was a unisex bathroom (it was in the teacher’s lounge) and they didn’t step on any toes but once High School came around it got to be so depressing and antagonistic that Nikki’s parents removed them for most of their freshman year.

Of course, I am talking about myself in a round about way, only to explain how angry and alone I felt—even up to the holidays when the family all came home and arguments would occur over who would be in one room and how I would not share my room with any of my brothers—as we had in the past.

So, for another week, where other families quaff ceasing bottom cups of eggnog and perhaps a glass of wine to go along the decorating the tree, mine would argue and some of then would leave and come back a few hours later like nothing ever happened. We never made the local news but I’m sure our neighbors had a lot of gossip to spread around. After the 26th, the Armitage household would once again go quiet.

I spent the days after Christmas, up until the 6th of January preparing to return to school with a few physiological changes, longer hair, a simple dress, and a new name. I was given strict rules to follow, like, I couldn’t use the girls’ locker room for PE.
There were no rules barring anything sent my way though and I got a lot of it—mostly from the girls, believe it or not. I learned the hard way we weren’t all made of sugar and spice.

I didn’t go to prom as none of the guys asked me and I didn’t know what the term pansexual meant so I never bothered to ask the girls. I mean I never got the jargon. I didn’t know I could be with whoever I wanted. There wasn’t a well of information I could use—as my parents did not have the internet and there wasn’t any support group in town and the only use the word “trans” was at “Unka Donald’s Auto Shop”. Where it says “Trannies fixed”. That sign still freaks me out, even within the correct context.
I only learned the answers to all of my confusion when Seth came home one summer. took me to Nashville and we spent a few hours at a “rainbow club” meeting. Seth didn’t tell me where we were going or why, he only said to get dressed and we’d head out to meet some people who “knew the ropes”.

So, picture, if you will, a young, fearful, and kind of motley-dressed girl walking into a nondescript building with a tall, muscular guy with a military haircut. And then, a few hours later, see the same two walking out with the girl having a more positive attitude and a better understanding of who she was and the guy sporting a ring in his right ear.

I won’t say that it was a crash course—I had done enough of that on my own—but it was like the ultimate Q&A session crossed with a birthday party. I made new friends that day; friends that I would visit off and on as the years went by. Originally, mom or dad would drive me, but, eventually, I drove myself across the state to spend the day, free to talk to others without being put down for whatever was the topic du jour was at school. They were better than any therapist I could ever go to and they absolutely loved Seth and asked about him. I would read to them the letters Seth sent to mom and dad. He would always end them with: “Always be who you are, Nikki,”

Two days before I would graduate from high school, a letter came from the State Department stating that Seth had been killed in an attack on a convoy in Afghanistan.

Life didn’t exactly change at that time, but I made a promise in my heart to do as my older brother said, no matter what the consequence. After all, I was the reason Seth and Adam never spoke to each other again before his death.

“Remember” By Trans-Siberian Orchestra