‘Have a great day, ma’am,’ she said, ensuring that I would

Published October 18, 2019

For half of the year — every other quarter — and for the rest of this month, Friday is my Saturday. This one was filled with appointments, profound grief over a fresh loss, and an overriding need for quiet. I decided to treat myself to lunch from Popeyes, comfort food dating to my youth in Louisiana.

As the woman at the drive-through handed me my order, she said, “Have a great day, ma’am.” I nearly burst into tears. They came seconds later, as I was driving away.

Have a great day, ma’am.”

I wanted time to stop. I wanted everything to pause, for so many reasons. One was that I felt the urge to go back to her and thank her, to try to tell her how much her words meant. Could I even make her understand? Not without stopping the spinning of the world, I thought.

My therapist and I talked not long ago about whether or not I “pass,” or “look like a woman.” It’s something that transgender women face everyday. All too often in my mind, strangers know instantly if you are a woman, if you are a man, and in my case, I am certain that no matter what I do, at best I look like a big, colorfully dressed gay man. I get called “sir” and “he” 99 times for every one time I am called “ma’am” or “she.” So it’s a rare and unexpected slice of heaven to be called one of the latter. (Note that tweets no longer display as the original ones because I deleted my Twitter account because of a certain billionaire.)

That first time it happened, it was dark outside, and the woman who handed me my coffee couldn’t see all of my face because of the angle, so part of me chalked it up to what I was wearing. Still, I wasn’t prepared for it, and indeed I needed a minute to compose myself before I could safely drive to work. On the day before Thanksgiving, less than two months after coming out as a woman, I had something new and wonderful to be thankful for.

When I have chosen stock images of women to use in my posts, such as the one above, I have always looked at them and think, “I don’t look anything like that.” Sometimes it turns into: “Who am I kidding? I don’t look at all like a woman.” And there is a cycle that can follow that is hard to escape. There are days when going out in public is easier than others.

On this Friday in October 2019, two years after coming out and more than a year into hormone replacement therapy, I was feeling more confident than in November 2017, days removed from the first two family members having seen me dressed as Carly for the first time. And on this Friday, between appointments and being hungry, I was mostly thinking only about lunch when I went to Popeyes.

And then it happened.

This was not in predawn darkness. She was not handing me coffee from a window several feet above my car window, with the frame of the vehicle obscuring most of my head from view. This was midday, with the drive-through window almost at eye level for me, and the woman able to see my entire face — maybe even my purple hair styled in a pixie shag. I wore a pink tee, with a white drape cardigan, pink and purple (and blue and black) galaxy leggings and, for the first time in public, a pink lipstick that I’d almost decided not to wear.

There are so many girlfriends who call me “lady” and “girl” and “woman” and other names that are music to my ears, and I adore them for it, but I tell myself that they are showing their support, not reacting to what their eyes are telling them. And maybe the woman at the drive-through was doing the same — like, she got it, she’d put 2 and 2 together, but she gendered me the way she did to affirm and show support.

My therapist would want me to consider that when this woman saw me, she saw a woman. And I am pretty sure that I started crying in part because I realized that, one wave after the first big wave of emotion from hearing that sweet music a few seconds earlier.

Had I been able to stop time and to go to this woman and talk with her and thank her, I would have wanted to try to tell her all of this and more. That’s probably neither possible nor the best of ideas, my rational brain told me on the drive home, and I don’t have the arrangement of words to tell you this story in just the right way so that you could hear the melody as I heard it. This incomplete version will have to do, but I felt compelled to share it. As much as I wanted you to know how much it touched me, I wanted you to know that I’m sure that these are musical notes that all transgender women treasure for the rest of their lives, even if being correctly gendered comes with a word, like “ma’am,” that might not be their favorite. (Me? I love it!)

I also want to more often be the type of person who tells you how good it feels to be correctly gendered than to publicly pout about how awful it feels to be misgendered. Count this as a sincere effort to focus more on the positive. For that to happen, though, something like what happened on what had been a gloomy Friday has to occur, and I am so grateful that it did.

Looking back, I wouldn’t have had to put the planet on pause to react better than I did. It struck me later that, after she said “Have a great day, ma’am,” instead of the slightly stunned “You too” that tumbled out of my mouth, I could have flashed a smile of gentle gratitude and said, “Consider it done!”

“Oh, and thank you! You too!”

Image of women with different hairstyles by Burbelo/via Shutterstock.

 

2 thoughts on “‘Have a great day, ma’am,’ she said, ensuring that I would”

  1. Lisa Landry

    Well isn’t that awesome?! And, not to down grade things, but there are actual (born) women who are viewed as men and told “thank you sir”. So to be acknowledged as a woman is totally AWESOME SAUCE! Take it and RUN! Don’t dissect it. Don’t say (like you did) – well maybe it was my clothes or my new pink lipstick…..take it and RUN! Be proud and hold your head high! Love you Carly! Your forever friend, Lisa

  2. barbara mooney

    When most of us who were born women look at pictures of women, we also feel like imposters. We don’t feel like we look like the pictures. Don’t forget that angle.

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