A few commentaries here on the events and experiences, personal and professional, life can bring your way.
My mother’s house
I sold my mother’s house. It’s the house where I grew up, where she lived on her own after my father died 19 years ago, where she spent her final days, before the hospital, before the heart trouble worsened, before the stroke that came in her sleep early that winter. Old people die in the winter, she’d say. She was 89.
The house. It’s a two-bedroom stucco bungalow three blocks from downtown Burlingame, one of a string of small town along the San Francisco Peninsula,a town that was like so many others in other places. My parents moved there from The City – that’s what we always called San Francisco, just The City — when I was three, their only child. It was 52 years ago. They paid cash for the house. People did back then; it’s what they did, anyway. You worked hard, you saved, you paid cash for what you needed or wanted, or you did without. And even if you had enough money you sometimes did without, because, you never know…something could happen someday and you’d need every penny.
My parents’ generation left The City – North Beach in their case — for the suburbs, mainly the Peninsula and Marin County. They wanted houses of their own and back yards big enough for kids to play and the sun – they wanted that warm mid Peninsula sunshine — instead of San Francisco’s flats and fog. My generation, the baby boomers turning about 60 now, couldn’t afford a house in their younger days in those tony Bay Area suburbs, or they still can’t.
Today, in Burlingame, for example, we see Starbucks and Peet’s go in just doors apart on the same downtown street and wonder why. We remember when Burlingame and towns like it were just that – real small towns. No Starbucks, no Sharper Image, no Sephora, no swank breakfast spots with crowds milling outside for a table on Sunday morning. We went to the Pancake House in Millbrae once in a while after church on Sunday, and it was a treat.
Burlingame back then had everything a kid could want, most of it right there on Burlingame Avenue. The jewel was the Fox Theatre, with its brightly lit marquee, uniformed ushers and proud masthead that proclaimed “F-O-X” in red neon. How many Saturday afternoons did I spend there watching westerns and war movies? Now it’s a faceless arcade of shops and offices. Just down the Avenue was Woolworth’s five and dime. It had a lunch counter with waitresses who brought you melted cheese sandwiches and made cherry and vanilla Cokes. There was Levy Brothers department store, now a collection of boutiques and salons. My mother worked there for a while, part time. It’s where we bought the salt-and-pepper cords, white shirts and navy blue sweaters we wore to St. Catherine’s grammar school a few blocks away on Primrose Road. Nearby were Toy Town and Jim’s Super and the Purity grocery story with its Quonset hut-style building. All gone.
Off El Camino Real at Howard Avenue, a block from the house, stood Hal’s diner, a big, kind of legendary place with floor-to-ceiling windows, a long bowed counter and high-backed Naugahyde booths. Was the Naugahyde maroon? Can’t remember. I do remember the stacks of French fries we’d get there after school. We laced them with ketchup, better tasting ketchup for some reason than you had at home. We had a bowling alley in Burlingame, another block down on Howard Avenue. A bowling alley for a town that small, with a section for playing pool – nothing seamy, not by today’s standards at least, just a place to have fun and maybe feel grown up. Farther down Howard, by the Southern Pacific tracks, were two “dairies,” we called them. Dairies without cows: Borden’s and Spreckles. Both had fountains inside. Milkshakes came in frosted metal containers, straight from the noisy blender. You got a tall glass, the cold metal container, and enough shake for two people. This was when the milkman delivered milk to your doorstep in the morning. It came in heavy, thick glass bottles, not cartons.
On Howard and California Drive, a speck of a stucco building is still there. It’s a sandwich shop now, but it was the Greyhound bus station. On long summer days friends and I would take the Greyhound to Candlestick Park. The bus cost 75 cents and it was safe for kids to do. We’d sit in general admission, out in left field – a buck fifty – buy hot dogs from a vendor, steaming dogs with that great ballpark brown mustard, and we’d see royalty on the field. Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, Jimmy Davenport. We’d pretend to be them, on the diamond at Washington Park and the concrete playground at Pershing School, just up the street and around the corner from the house. My father worked there as a groundskeeper and then a janitor after his job as a blocker of women’s hats disappeared with the end of San Francisco’s millinery business sometime in the 1960s. The school is long gone; it’s a neighborhood park.
In drawers and closets of the house I’ve found more old photographs than I knew existed in the house. I see them as gifts — pictures of parents and grandparents and me and family friends, all captured in time. One is a small snapshot of the house taken from the street soon after we moved in, 1956 maybe. It’s black and white with a crinkle-cut border. My tin, pedal-powered roadster is at the foot of the long driveway. Farther up, by the front-porch steps, is our 1954 Plymouth sedan, white on turquoise. It was a sturdy, practical car, nothing fancy, the kind of car you could pay for in cash and still get by just fine.
So I sold my mother’s house. It wasn’t an easy decision. I could have kept it – spruced it up, rented it, maybe lived there someday. But I didn’t. I hope my mother would understand. She’s gone, my father’s gone, those days are gone. That part of life ends now; the rest is different now. I have my memories. Nobody else can own them, ever. I can hear the voices and the laughter, smell the good cooking, feel the freshness of sheets dried in the sun on a line out back. We never had a dishwasher or a clothes dryer; my mother never wanted one.
Good memories. Always with me.
February 2006
Wedding belles and a mysterious guest from out West
CHARLESTON (South Carolina), Oct. 13, 2001 — In one of the grandest and most intricately planned productions seen in the South since the filming of “Gone With the Wind,” Amy Elissa Powell and Vincent Michael Jajuga were finally wed today before more than 150 well-wishers at the historic French Huguenot Church in the heart of this city.
“Goodness,” the bride’s mother, Patricia Leigh Trivette of Oakland, California, was heard to say some time after the ceremony and reception.
“Wadn’t it just wonderful? Everything turned out just as we’d hoped and expected. I’m happier than a possum in a pie pantry. Why, I daresay I can hardly wait for the next blessed event – my first grandchild.” (Family and friends were relieved that Ms. Trivette’s natural-born accent turned even more pronounced after she had been here for the week preceding the wedding. Their constant concern is that her Southern mannerisms might be corrupted or lost all together, owing to so many years in the more “exotic” environs of California. Happily, however, this was not the case, as yet. For their part, the bride and groom were the picture of perfection. She was resplendent. He was responsive. This delighted the bride to no end, particularly when the preacher posed the obligatory question, and brought a tear to the eye of her mother, who fortunately came equipped with waterproof mascara.
It was a balmy afternoon in the Deep South, warm and a bit close but not overly humid. Wispy white clouds dappled a soft blue sky.
The bride wore a billowy gown that was simple yet elegant and the color of candlelight in a parlor at dusk. Her maid of honor and four bridesmaids offered a striking contrast in gowns of apple red with toenails to match. The groom and his men were attired in black tuxedoes from the Southern branch of famed clothier Selix de la Renta.
A resident of nearby Mt. Pleasant, the groom originally hails from Massachusetts, causing him to be referred to here, usually with affection, as a Yankee. A large contingent of family from up North, mostly Springfield and Cape Cod, traveled to Charleston for the wedding, including the groom’s exceptionally sharp-minded 92-year-old grandmother, a retired school teacher, and his 90-year-old great uncle.
Looking on with pride at the wedding of their first-born grandchild were Jack and Treva Trivette of Winston-Salem in neighboring North Carolina. During the ceremony Ms. Trivette was ever ready with a handkerchief, as Mr. Trivette had allowed in advance, “I always do cry at weddings and funerals.”
(Early the next morning, having departed the reception with Mrs. Trivette before the bride and groom bid farewell amid a shower of bubbles, Mr. Trivette put Ultra Joy liquid soap in the dishwasher, inadvertently creating a formidable flow of bubbles of his own that took some time to sponge off the kitchen floor of the family’s rented beach house.)
Rounding out the Trivette congregation were the mother of the bride’s three younger brothers, all from the Tar Heel State as well.
Other guests came from far and wide, north, south, east and west. Among them was a mysterious stranger from California. His presence generated a good amount of comment and speculation, especially from the three brothers of the bride’s mother.
“He’s kinda hard to figure,” one of them said of the stranger. “He’s got an Eye-talian name…Malfeasance, or somethin’ like that, but he showed up wearin’ cowboy boots, he likes country music and now he’s talkin’ a little Southern. He can’t be all bad, I reckon.”
Another brother observed, “We’re not quite sure what to make of him just yet. After all, he does come from out around San Francisco and Berkeley, and you know how odd folks can be from out there. Fact is, we’d just as soon see some of those people stay put. But we think we’ll cut this feller some slack…for now.”
The brothers also remarked that the stranger and the bride’s mother talked of a place they called only “UC,” apparently a school of some sort where they both work at jobs that seemed difficult for them to explain in any meaningful way to the wedding guests and respective family members.
“I don’t get it,” one of the brothers said. “Only U-C we know has an ENN in it. As in U-ENN-C. Shoot, they say they got football and basketball teams at this U-C place, but you coulda fooled me.”
The brothers and the stranger, however, did find themselves spending time together and talking about interests they had in common – the various styles and tastes of Southern barbeque, for example, and the vagaries of country/western music. In fact, after considerable deliberation (and a libation or two) they came to agreement on the following favorite song titles:
- “I Still Miss You, Baby, but My Aim’s Getting’ Better All the Time”
- “Some Other Fool’s Got Her Now and I’m Free to Fool Around Again”
- “I’m Not Taklin’ About Forever, I’m Just Wondering About a Little Later Tonight”
- “I’m So Miserable Without You, It’s Like Having You Here”
- “All the Girls Get Prettier at Closing Time, So Long as the Lights Stay Low”
As the long-waited day drew to a close – and after a suitably festive reception at the beach house of the fabled military academy The Citadel – the bride and groom went off to honeymoon in the Canadian Rockies where, presumably, they would see to it that North and South would meet like never before…
The mysterious stranger saddled up, somewhat reluctantly, for the trip back West and back to work at that UC place (minus the ENN)…
Life for the Trivettes of North Carolina began returning to normal, or as normal as the Trivettes can bring themselves to be…
The bride’s mother, with a smile and a sigh, softly uttered “goodness” once again…
And everyone agreed on one true thing: That one word – “goodness” – sure enough did sum up this saga of the South pretty derned well.
Nuptials take on ‘Southern Eye-talian’ flavor
ISLE OF PALMS, SC (Thursday, Aug. 8, 2002) – “Goodness, me,” the groom exclaimed after the toast, “I’ve been Trivette-ized!”
The bride was characteristically demure, although some time later she slipped on an oversized T-shirt emblazoned with the words, in green and red lettering, “Pray for Me, My Husband Is Italian.”
The scene was the marriage of Patricia Leigh Trivette and Richard Louis Malaspina. They exchanged vows in a brief but momentous ceremony during the annual Trivette family vacation along the Atlantic shore. More specifically, the ceremony took place on the screened porch of a beach house – the screened porch, in the groom’s estimation, being one of the South’s greatest contributions to the social advancement of the nation next to hush puppies and chopped barbecue.
In more ways than one, it was a grand day, cleansed and freshened by a tropical rainstorm that passed in the night. It left the climate surprisingly temperate, with sky the color of washed denim and a white-capped sea in the distance.
The wedding party and guests, consisting mostly of immediate family, were attired in a fashion befitting the setting and the season: aloha shirts and blouses, save for the bride who wore ivory-colored slacks and a matching silk blouse hand-sewn for the occasion by her mother; shorts for almost everyone except the groom, who, after considerable deliberation and in deference to the bride, opted for cream-colored trousers; and orchid-laden leis for all.
The bride smiled and said, “I do,” which sounded more like “Ah dew.” The groom gulped and said, “I do?”
As the minister pronounced the couple man and wife, the bride’s parents, Jack and Treva Trivette of Winston-Salem, NC, shed a tear of joy and breathed a sigh of relief.
“My word,” the mother of the bride said, “we’d about given up hope. We thought she’d never marry again and might move back here with us.”
The bride’s father allowed of the groom, “We approve one hunnerd percent, even if he is EYE-Talian. ‘Least he’s not a Democrat.”
Turning to the groom he asked belatedly, “You aren’t one, are you…a Democrat, I mean?”
Also in attendance, which accounted for the groom’s “Trivette-ized” remark, were numerous members of the Trivette family: Two brothers, one with his wife and another with his fiancée; a niece and nephew, each accompanied by two very special friends; another niece; and the bride’s daughter and son-in-law, who themselves had celebrated their nuptials in nearby Charleston last fall.
The newest member of the Trivette clan was on hand as well, even though she slept through most of the proceedings – Sheridan Grace Jajuga, born barely three weeks before with grandmother “Lee-Lee” here for the blessed event.
The bride was attended by her daughter Amy and the groom by his son Chris, soon to be bound for fame and fortune in Australia. Advancing age kept the groom’s mother at home in California, where her warm wishes and homemade pasta greeted the newlyweds’ upon their return.
By nightfall the Trivette brothers and the groom, with libations in hand, had retired to the screened porch where the brothers counseled their new in-law as to what they described as “rules of marriage for Southern wives.”
“Look here,” the eldest brother began, “The first, most important rule is this: Most men own three pairs of shoes, tops. Women, they own thirty, forty pair, maybe more. You tell her that’s got to stop, right now.”
“That’s right,” another brother put in, “And here’s another first, most important rule: The toilet seat can go up and it can go down. You don’t always have to be putting it down. She can do it by herself. That’s why it has hinges.”
A third brother was unable to attend the wedding but quick to communicate his advice by phone.
“Here’s another first, most important rule,” he said. “No catalogs. These women, they just love their mail-order catalogs for clothes and shoes and jewelry and books and all kinds of things you didn’t even know existed. You don’t put a stop to that you’ll be needing a mailbox big as a doublewide trailer. The only catalog she can get is the Victoria’s Secret catalog. You tell her that, hear?”
The groom assured each brother in turn of his certainty that the bride would abide by the rules.
At this, the bride’s father, who had been looking on knowingly, said to the groom, “Son, you’d best get some rest now. It’s been a long day and I believe you’re hull-ucinatin’.”
The newlyweds, once back in California, planned a series of honeymoon sojourns over the coming months in various locales. In recognition of their place and type of employment, they acknowledged that such an action might violate the California Open Meeting Law for staging what could be construed as a “serial honeymoon.”
They resolved to proceed with the plan, however, saying that the escapes would be limited to a quorum of two, require no public notice and take place entirely behind closed doors.
Enforcement of these conditions would be entrusted to certain family members of the groom – one of the many benefits, as he would remind the bride for years to come, of acquiring a husband of EYE-talian descent.
The more things change…
It was a personal and professional first for me. “One for the books,” my father would have said.
Here was someone I’d worked with, a physician named Judson Lively, sitting across from me, alone, calmly looking me in the eye and saying that he was in the process of becoming a transgender woman, about to tell his colleagues, staff and patients, and asking me what to do when the phones start ringing and the email starts flying.
In my life of 54 years and career of more than 30 – all of that time here in the progressive Bay Area and part of it as a newspaper reporter covering all sorts of breaking news and writing human interest stories – I’d never been confronted with anything quite like this.
The concept of gender change and the psychological and physical transformation that goes with it are common enough these days. It happens. OK, so what. For me and probably many other people, or men, of my vintage it’s the stuff, admittedly, of spectacle, passing curiosity, and some degree of prurient interest. Or lack of interest: So what else is new; I don’t understand it, but, hey, it’s a free country; live and let live.
Not anymore.
From the moment Jud Lively, now Judy Diana Lively, told me her story that day in my office, I’ve felt privileged – and enlightened – to be small part of a journey that one person has been living for almost an entire lifetime. The revelation to me was part of Judy’s carefully planned timetable to share her secret with people at work before taking a few days off and returning with a legally changed name and looking, dressing, acting like a woman, being a woman in preparation for sexual resassignment surgery and continued transformation in the years ahead. Judy’s two worlds and two lives were finally merging. She could start feeling and being whole for the fist time in 48 years.
For the past several years Judson Lively has been physician-in-chief of a Kaiser Permanente service area that covers most of Contra Costa County, from Antioch, over to Walnut Creek, Lafayette and Orinda, and down to Pleasanton and Livermore, serving about 350,000 patients. It is a position of high standing in the organization. It’s also a position of some public prominence, which is one reason why Judy included me in her timetable.
An unusual and perhaps remarkable aspect of their journey is that Judy and her family are not going to pull up stakes and start a new and different life somewhere. Judy and wife Karen, who has known the secret for almost 20 years of marriage, aren’t separating or divorcing. They gave no thought to it, ever. Judy will remain in her leadership position and continue seeing patients. She is a gifted surgeon beloved by patients and staff. What’s more, Judy and Karen, a registered nurse, and daughter Jenny, soon to become one, want to share their story in the hope of increasing public awareness of transgender issues and perhaps helping other people and families facing similar circumstances, or afraid to.
The striking thing to me – and a part of my own journey thanks to Judy and her family — is this: Why does it matter that this particular event happens to be about transsexuality and transgender? It’s really about the changes life throws our way, how we face (or face up to) them, what we learn from them, who we really are and maybe discovering ourselves in the process.
Don’t these challenges, these values, this process of acceptance and progress apply to so much in life? It could be experiencing the suffering or death of a parent, a spouse or a child. It could be could be living with some personal illness, hardship or misfortune. It could be the simple, inevitable act of growing old gracefully and getting on with life.
These things, these live-changing events as we like to call them, really are about pain and struggle, candor and courage, dignity and integrity, relief and renewal – and, if you’re lucky and work at it, about unconditional love, inherent goodness…contentment. That’s the real story and lesson here, the essence of what Judy and Karen have to show and teach, not necessarily anything directly or only about transsexuality and transgender.
At their home one Saturday morning as Judy, Karen and Jenny talked so freely and openly with a newspaper reporter we’d approached to tell the story, I found myself thinking of events in my own life. I thought mostly of a marriage that went on too long, the unwillingness or fear of admitting it, the ultimate, undeniable need to break free and build a new life — and, yes, the hurt and the memories, joyful and not, that will be with me forever.
During the interview, Judy, with a physician’s perception, said something like: “Everybody has problems and issues and pain in their life, something that happens that changes their life. This just happened to be my issue. It’s no more important, no more serious than other things people have to live with. I see it all the time, people with tremendous courage, living and dying. This is not a big thing compared to what other people go through. I’ll be fine. We can handle it.”
Judy and Karen are making plans to renew their wedding vows this June, around the time of their 20th anniversary. Different rings, different words, same good people. Now and forever.
I intend to be there.
March 2005
Rick Malaspina 
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