Vignette 1: Meeting Each Other

Cathy: I'm Cathy, or Catherine, but Cathy Anderson. Um, I'm 68. I go by she, she/her. Tend to be a little bit more on the non-binary side, but only recently really realized that kind of thing.

Cady: I'm Cadance Anderson. C-A-D-A-N-C-E. I like it because it has dance in it, and it's life dance. I'm 70 years old - actually 70 in May.

Cathy: In another week and a half, yeah.

Cady: My, my pronouns are, are the same as Cathy's, she/her.

Cathy: So, we met in high school, over actually in what is now Tukwila, Washington. It was unincorporated King County at the time. The street was one lane each way, with a ditch on the side, and it was always fun watching - especially in the snow, because we were on the hill - when people would not know how to drive in snow, and they'd either end up on the rockery on the one side, or in the ditch on the other side. And that's how kind of it became incorporated, but we still had the feeling of being a small, you know, kind of rural area.

Cady: Kind of trapped away from the big.

Cathy: Yeah. We weren't, we weren't Seattle; we weren't Renton; we weren't Kent; we weren't any of those. We were, you know, little.

Cady: So, Cathy and I, we... Our lives crossed several times in high - in school. Cathy's now in the school system and so is my dead name. So is Cady. We had an English teacher in middle school that insisted that we write-

Cathy: Journals.

Cady: Journals. So, we wrote journals. So I, I happened down. I was in high school, I would come back down in 9th grade, high school started 9th, and I'd come down, and see her sometime when I was down there. She said, "Look. Look, look, look, you've got Cady, you got her. Look, I know- I never let anybody, read them somebody else's journal. But this person is... has so many shared experiences with you. You you've got to know this person." And it was her. So I read it, and it was interesting. Cathy had she, she, she been in the rural area. She rode horses, she knew about farms and things like this. And she loved Eastern Washington, loved it. I longed for Eastern Washington. From, from Western Washington, ‘cause I always felt like home over there. That's where I started out, and I'm just out of place here.

Vignette 2: Connecting

Cady: So, high school came in. We had a Spanish class. We were making- which?

Cathy: We were both in it.

Cady: We were both in it, and I couldn't cut a string- making a piñata - cause I didn't know. So, she marched over with her girlfriend, and smugly took the shears for me, and snipped it.

Cathy: Here this is how you do it. You've got to hold the blades together and-"

Cady: And then smugly walked away. And since there are- so first cross there. The next time that would happen is- I like photography. So, we had a photography club, and the... We had people come in. We ask anybody wants to be in this. So, she and her girlfriend come to it and didn't think it looked very fun, so they left.

Cathy: Nobody else showed up.

Cady: You and your girlfriend, you were always there. And then lastly was my senior year, and I was in the physics lab. Cathy came in, and she would come in and she-

Cathy: During the physics class.

Cady: Just make herself available all the time to talk, and-

Cathy: I came, I'd come in whenever they were out doing a lab. And Cady and her lab partner, they had the- they had the wave machine. And so I like to say that, yeah, "We met making waves."

Cady: Yeah.

Vignette 3: Cady Early Life

Cady: So, initially I was born in Ellensburg, here. I breathed my first air here in the hospital. I lived in Thorp, Washington, just East. Or just East-

Cathy: West.

Cady: West, right. Thank you. And on a historic, historic ranch piece of property. It was my grandparents' property, and we lived in a small house, my mom, my dad, and my brother. There's a pioneer cemetery on the property that we had at the time. Mortimer Thorp and the Splawns- they're people whose- first settlers in the Kittitas Valley. And the reason we ended up in Thorp, was my father, and my mother met in Burien, Washington. My grandparents owned a little store there. And my mother and my father got married, and then she became expectant, and my grandmother wanted- My grandfather and my grandmother were Kansans and Oklahoma. They knew agriculture, but they did all kinds of other things, so they ended buying this ranch here. By two to three years old, we moved to Coulee City for a little bit. It was a freshly little town because of the dam. We would eventually move back to Western Washington, in a suburb way up north of Seattle: Alley Terrace. And I would do my first four years of education there. And then my mother and my father got divorced, leaving my mother with the house and the two kids. She went bankrupt basically because at the time, if you were divorced, you were out outcast. And this is years and years ago. It's really odd to hear it now today, but she couldn't get a loan. The house was mortgaged. They didn't want her as a single owner in the house, it was a really dirty thing. So my grandparents swooped in here, and rescued my mom, and my brother-

Cathy: And you.

Cady: And me too. I got rescued. And that meant now we were living in Thorp.

Vignette 4: Reflecting on Thorp House

Cady: That the Thorp. the house is, there was this, there was a train that used to go up behind the house that went up to Taneum Canyon.

Cathy: A long time ago.

Cady: And so it was left as a train bed, but no trails or anything. The house was split. It was old. There was artifacts everywhere. There was a place where the Indians would camp over- it was a really ancient, wonderful place. I was just totally in love with this house and the place around it. Everything went around, and I really like my cow 'cause we were friends. I used to talk to my cow for- when I milked her. And I would talk to her and she'd listen and stuff. And when the milk was almost full, she'd lift her foot up and put it down in the bucket, and I'd get in trouble because I just lost that much milk, so. So Susan wants my cow, my little horses, and things. The horses were- we'd spent a lot of time on horses, riding ditch, looking for fences, looking for sick cattle. Anyway, that's when I was living there. So, we took off again, and that's how we met.

Vignette 5: Thorp Family Dynamics

Cady: My grandmother made sure I was going to learn every Kansas housewife skill that she had, and she also did oil painting, and that I was going to learn how to do that, and how to run the turtle sewing, sewing machine. My grandfather decided I was going to work horseman skill there was, and every mechanic thing he did. My brother, David, was a couple years back, so I was more of a helper around the farm, right. When my father left us, we never, never got any support at all. So it was just us. And we're cast-offs, right. They're- We're- We're back, we're in their place and we are now- We're now like renters of sorts in their house instead of- And we are still considered family but- And my mom, she worked at the Sternberg Inn in Ellensburg. She worked at Valley Locker, not the valley, but Twin City Foods and-

Cathy: She worked at the box place, too, didn't she?

Cady: Oh, and at the box factory in Thorp. Like the one little thing they had in Thorp. She always- The jobs she worked in were always really inexpensive as far as wages goes, always low wages jobs. Um, she worked at one cafe here in Ellensburg that you cooked in the center and there was- There was tables all the way around it. And the kids from the high school would come over, and they'd all have French fries and things like this and. My- My mother had a cleft palate, so she wore an arm trainer. Her mom had a cleft palate, and my brother had a cleft palate, but his was fixed with surgery. The fellow who owned the cafe also had a cleft palate. So, mom always thought, well, you know, you're somebody that understands. He had to have an armed tra- She called it an armed trainer, too.

Vignette 6: Social Isolation

Cady: I never had a girlfriend in my life, never had a girlfriend, or any friends that were girls in Eastern Washington. I never saw very many- over here - I never saw any other kids 'cause our ranch was well away from everybody else, and you rode buses for like 45 minutes to an hour. I knew some of the other kids, but there was never any interaction other than I would- There was some violence toward me, but I didn't think it was anything different than any other boy. And Thorpe school at that time, and those years, that's just a very normal thing. That I couldn't find any way to get in, and I was isolated from the girls simply because I wouldn't play basketball, and needed one more person to have a team, and they were really upset that I wouldn't do that. But I had the same problem, that I just couldn't do, and I couldn't, it wasn't my place in life.

Vignette 7: Early Gender Journey

Cady: As far as my gender journey goes, I just was an isolated kid all my early years. Never really crossed my mind about anything this sort. And now as I'm a pre-adolescent going in a rural, very rural, place. And that changes. What happens is after a couple years, my father comes back and reclaims his family.

Cathy: That was at the end of 7th grade.

Cady: I was in the 7th grade. I had just figured out how to, how to exist in Thorp.

Cathy: Right.

Cady: One thing I found out is even though it's a very rural area, there's this gray area about personal gender and life. I tried so hard to be a guy here. You know, what you do is you watch, and you learn, and you mimic. But when it came down to going into the locker room for P.E., I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. I'm just- No, I couldn't. I can't. This is not the right place for me. I had no idea why. So, I just waited the last boy and went down there. Step back in the hall, walk down to a bathroom that was way down at the end, and I hung out there. And you know what? No one ever came to get me. So for whole winter, I would just go down to that bathroom, close the door, and I still passed P.E. They gave me, they gave me a C. But you know- I did- It was- I don't know what they assumed about me. Whether they assumed that I had something on my body I didn't want to show, like bruises or something, or they just didn't want to do that. One day, after about four months, four or five months, my teach- the teacher came down to that place and said, "Oh, so that's where you're at." And that was it. But there was no way I could, I could do that. So it became a battle with my- with myself, so. And I wasn't quite sure why. It's just- I just knew something was totally out of kilter. And so I made it through that. That was 6th grade, and I made it through 7th grade. And I found ways to be able to circumvent it and still have P.E. It's just there's things you do to, to garner yourself. And they seemed fine with whatever I would do. I never played any sports. I was the manager for the game, for the basketball, which is the biggest game around in the valley, right. Everyone does basketball. And so my father came back to get us. I really didn't- Wasn't exciting for me because I had figured out how to exist here. I finally figured it out. I figured out- It was the ranch, I milked cows, I rode horses, I mucked out things, we worked cattle, we branded them, we did all those things you do. And so, then they brought us back to the other side of the mountains. On the other side of the mountain the things that were driving my parents apart came back again because they rejoined. Now we're in- I'm in another area that's an urban sort of rural area. It's a small little place. So, I'm in middle school. They're very close to the school. We're just down from the middle school. So I never used a bathroom in middle school. I never used a bathroom in high school. I would just go home. No matter what time of day it was, I would just leave. I knew how long I had between classes. I would just go home. I never ate lunch in middle school, never ate lunch in high school. I just went home because we were really close. And like, it was a way I could survive because I had no place in those, in those groups, so.

Cathy: One of the things, one of the things about the middle school- that was about the time when they had finally split out. Up until that time, Showalter had been a K through 9 school. So there were kids who had been together since kindergarten- practically since the cradle. And it was very hard to get into that and that's happened to both of us.

Cady: Neither one of us could fit in.

Vignette 8: Gender Realization

Cady: I had my gender moment when my grandmother's closet, I looked in there. And I was young, I had no idea what was going on. I tried on one of her dresses. I looked in the mirror and there was just this epiphany that I felt just like a normal human being.

Interviewer: About what age was that?

Cady: Ten-ish. Nine or ten-ish. And I thought, "Okay. Okay. That's- It's cool. I'm a kid." And then my grandmother, she peeked around the corner and caught me, but there was no out thing from there, she just, "Oh, It's a cute thing." So I thought, "What can I do to fix this?" I've just been caught out. So, I put on my grandfather's hat and his- one of the big shirts, and looked around. So, she saw me do that. So I thought- And then later on she told my grandfather, "You know, you know, little, little someone tried on your hat, your hat and your boot." And though, Yeah." Didn't say anything about herself. But at that moment, I somehow knew who I was, and it was painful to take those clothes off. I wanted to be that person all the time. So I was always kind of envious of with other girls, and that would come around, too. But I had no point, place there. I had no place with the guys. So I just became this lone wolf thing. My bubble, if you call it that, didn't really include other people. I was always there. I was always in a position where other people didn't come across me. And school, I just find I couldn't find myself. But it was all- It wasn't surreal, or wasn't on a frontal part of your mind. It's just something you knew in the back. I can never ditch the feeling. Never could do that. But on the other hand, I didn't cross dress that often because there just was no opportunity. And I knew that when I try it at that point, yeah. And then of course, it's a big mismatch because if you're a real person, you, you know all about the biology things of cows, and calves, and horses, and all the animals, to chickens. So you know the biology. So I always, always had in my mind, after that point, I have kept a little listing of why in the world you wouldn't want to be female.

Cathy: Why would you want to be?

Cady: Why would you want to be female? Oh, look at this one. This is bad, this is bad, this is bad. And look at your mother. How- How easily you could be wrong? So I had pretty much figured out from that, I'm broken. And one of the things that was broken out was is my mother was schizophrenic. She felt like someone else was always controlling her. And she would drink, and then she would tell me about this person. And I kept thinking to myself, I didn't know anything about me but what I was going on with me. I must be having some sort of the same line as she had. And I, you know, what am I going to do to, you know- The drinking part, I got that figured out- Just don't ever do that. The part about being paranoid, that, the paranoia- that I couldn't figure out. And so I always kept at myself 'cause I knew there was no normalization of gender, of gender other than black and white, male or female.

Vignette 9: Belonging at the Ranch

Cady: We were a very, very poor family. We, when my mother, my family, re-formed.

Cathy: Two-bedroom house.

Cady: Two-bedroom house. And my dad actually had a lot of debt. So, there was no money. And I think, actually a couple times, I thought, I mean, at least I felt more other substance over in Eastern Washington was with my grandparents. There wasn't so much substance on this. But she- Mom kept her episodes down really low when she was, went for first couple years. And then things started falling apart 'cause my brother started doing drugs, and then my mother started doing weird things, and then my father wandered off again. But I always went back every summer to work on the ranch. So- And I thought this is the one place that I belong. I know every corner, every crack. I walked up and down Taneum Creek a 1000 times. I know- I know how to saddle horse, I know not to get anywhere near the hoofs. Things you learn. And the cow will start this funny movement right before she picks her foot up to put It in the bucket. And cats are the coolest things because you can squirt milk at a cat, and it will just put its little paws up there and catch it The barn cats were just amazing. So, agriculture has a feminine feel to it for me. Things grow. And I was never a very good horse trainer because I wanted to be more of a companion to the horse than- And actually it's not as feminine as you think that women are really good horse trainers. But that's why I really felt everything came from the ranch. It would be there, it would sit, it would always, it was always abiding. It was there, it wouldn't change. Even though, looking over my time there, they built an Interstate, Interstate 90. And there was a time before that, and that was my early time. And part of the gravel from Interstate 90 came from Taneum Creek. And where it came from Taneum Creek was on her ranch. And they came, and just decimated the creek with the foliage around the creek to dig all that gravel out. But I watched it all change, but the creek started coming back. Things started coming back. And it was still my place again, and I still felt the same thing.

Vignette 10: Accommodations

Cady: I cross dressed initially. Some- I was given three or four more times to be able to do it when I was at the ranch because sometimes I would be left alone. And each time you feel this very full of self-identity in the clothes that I was meant to be. So I just, I just feel right in it. I look in the mirror and feel right in it. And- But when you have to give that up and take them off, it actually hurts you. I'd go for days feeling bad after that. The other big thing was I started getting hair on my chin and you can pull them out for so long. And then decide, well, that's it. I just can't beat it. This is where you are. You are doomed. This is the penalty you have. And at that point you start to make accommodations. But then I heard- I started hearing little things. Even in the rural areas that we did have UHF. We could see Laugh-In. I learned about this person named Christine Jorgensen from TV. I spent all my time in the library because in the mornings I didn't want to be caught in the hall, anywhere in any of the floor of the schools. They had too much high jinks. And there was a local science fiction author that lived in Thorp, Alan E. Norris. He wrote some-

Cathy: Norse.

Cady: Norse. He wrote some classic science fiction, and they had some of his books, along with a bunch of other ones. I would read all those things, and there's all kinds of things in there you can lose yourself into. By the time I got through into a senior, and I had pretty much decided life's over after high school. There isn't going to be any more life, you know. You just, you wait to go. My grandfather has remarried another lady, my grandmother passed away. The ranch is turned into some- But I'm only- I'm no longer a family member there. Now, I'm a visitor member. My mother's trying desperately to not lose contact with her dad.

Cathy: Her dad. Her dad's disappeared.

Cady: And dad went and disappeared again. So, we make- We just- We subside- We subsist through this night, and every summertime is- I have that, like, recharge at the ranch. And then I don't like to come back anyway, but- and everybody suffers. Of course they tell you later when you find out that everyone else had a rotten time in high school, too. but. But then I just said, I'm 18 now. I decided to life's over after this because I had no other place to-

Cathy: Actually 19. You're 19.

Cady: 19. Life's over because I had no place else to go, nothing to do, and there's no hope for me because I cannot continue on as I am.

Vignette 11: Cady’s Senior Year

Cady: So everybody else in the senior class is pairing up with all these other- All these other couples are forming during the senior year, and it was just outside of my purview. I didn't understand it, and I only knew black and white. I didn't understand what- who gay people were. This stuff is- This wasn't- It was all closeted.

Cathy: This is 1973, when it was- just really wasn't.

Cady: Oh yeah, all closeted, all types of stuff.

Cathy: Yeah, kind of surprised us later to find out what some of the orientations were for some of our friends. It just-

Cady: As they- they just- they all kept- they all kept very, very quiet.

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: There was plenty of people that would be- Guys were all gay bashers. I mean, that was just the way it was. It was just the way it was. And so not physically. But you know, if you got a longer haircut, and especially with the shag haircut was the end of you, right. So I decided that okay, it's over. I'll go to the ranch one more time. And my grandfather is now old enough where he's going to retire. And when he retires, he sells the place, and it's going to go. And I can't, you know. So I'm gonna go there one more time. And Cathy comes along, and I think to myself, "You know, I've never had a girlfriend, and I'm- I don't know what I would really do I, but I want a friend really bad. I want somebody to care for me.

Vignette 12: Cathy’s Attraction to Cady

Cathy: Part of what drew me to Cady is she wasn't all masculine. She wasn't the Tim Allen, you know, "More power," this kind of thing. And I had broken up with a boyfriend I'd had, who was five years older than me. I'm 7- I met him, I was 16 and he was 21. And there's some things that started happening that I was smart enough to get out of the relationship. And it was- Nothing ever happened that actually- But it could have been considered statutory, especially considering the five-year difference where I was underage. And so met him at church, which is where a lot of the, you know, the girls were. I wouldn't say on the prowl, but the girls are looking for- Yeah. And I had just started going to the church there, and so had he, and they decided- they being some of the adults there- had decided that for the Christmas pageant, I would be Mary, he would be Joseph. now. And that kind of started everything then after that. But so I had finally said, "Nope, I can't do this anymore," and kind of looked at what was it that I was really looking for. I didn't need somebody physical, I didn't need somebody who's going to grab me, you know, like that. I needed somebody who was gentle, thoughtful, artistic. And Cady's lab partner was a lot that way, too. And so was Cady. And so that's why I hit it off really well with both of them, I think. And so she- Cady asked me then to go to, you know, would you come to my graduation party? And another girlfriend, a year younger than me, her boyfriend was Cady's guy friend. And-

Cady: You're usually- You targeted my boyfriend- my friend.

Cathy: Well, no. Every girl was targeting Michael.

Cady: Michael. Yeah, he played a guitar.

Cathy: You know. But they had a table in the cafeteria that they would- one table they would set up before school. And we would start, you know- I finally decided that I'm going to be part of that group.

Cady: Part of the before the school group,

Cathy: The before the school group. And so we would meet there. And come May. Michael and Cady, their birthdays two days apart. And I found that out. And, so this one girl who was trying to impress Michael, you know, said, "Hey, let's make a cake for him." Birthday cake for Michael. I said, Well, let's make it for both of them." So we went and did- got all the ingredients and we bought, and I said, "Hey, I'm going to get a card for Cady," She says, "I'll get one for Michael." And so we went, and we got our cards. And then we brought this cake to school to have before school. And Cady was flabbergasted. It's like nobody had ever done something like this before. Because I made sure she knew this was for her, too. This wasn't all Michael and-

Cady: I was tongue tied.

Cathy: And so that's pretty much kind of starting it. So this was beginning of May. I have now six weeks to get her to notice me. Not as a girlfriend necessarily, but as a as a friend.

Vignette 13: Cathy’s Summer Quincy Orchard

Cathy: I was going to be going over to Quincy. I was going to be over at the orchard. I'm going to be thinning apples, I'm going to be picking cherries, I'm going to be taking people out to show them where the fruit is. Dollar a day for that job. The apples I got paid 2 bucks an hour, thinning apples. Cherries was 10 cents a pound. If you made- If you picked a hundred pounds you were doing good. So keep that in mind when you go and you pay your 8 bucks a pound for cherries, you know. But none of the kids who came to work at the orchard, the high schoolers, would give me the time of day because I was the granddaughter of the owners. So they didn't, you know? So I never ended up having any friends. I was very, very alone. I had my pony. Blondie- Blondie was four and I was two when my grandparents got her. And still had her when I was 18. So, you know, that was my summers, and that started pretty much when I was 13. And every summer I would be over there. Originally it was I would take people out to show them where the 'You Pick' fruit was, and then I would have to weigh out their stuff, take the money, record the amount-

Cady: Make lunches for your grandpa.

Cathy: Make lunches for my grandfather 'cause my grandmother had just finished up her pharmacy license. She had started- I understood the whole thing with schizophrenia because my grandmother had issues. And so, again, it was something that we had in common, and my grandmother had had finished up. So, she's now a licensed pharmacist. And so she would go into Ephrata, or Moses Lake, or Quincy, or Wenatchee. She would be a substitute pharmacist for all those places, and when I'd spend summers with her, summers with them, there would be occasionally, on a Saturday if she had to go in, she'd let me come with her. I kind of fell in love with basically sciences and things like this. I was a math kid. I loved to read. I had a lot of- Again, there was that familiarity.

Vignette 14: Cady Comes out to Cathy

Cathy: But so we corresponded- The end of the summer we both- Okay- I shared my secret, my deep, dark secret, which was the ex-boyfriend. And at the end of the summer, Cady shared hers. And this is now before- I haven't graduated. I'm going to be going back to-back to school in just a couple of weeks.

Cady: You're a senior.

Cathy: Yeah. We had been out making chocolate chip cookies over at Cady's parents' house. She had a short break to come back over, I think it was Labor Day weekend or something. So she was back on the west side. And so we were sitting out on the porch. We have a batch of cookies in the oven. Sitting on the porch, and Cady says, "I need to tell you something." And she told me about her feelings and I says, "Okay. Doesn't scare me. We'll figure something- We'll figure it out."

Cady: That's what she said, "We'll figure it out. It's okay."

Cathy: We'll figure it out. And says, "Oh," because she said- She was actually- Part of what she was doing was asking me to marry her, but she didn't want, didn't want there to be any secrets between us. So, I knew even, you know, before I even started my senior year at school, first off, I was now engaged, you know, much to my mother's horrified chagrin.

Cady: A few reasons. She had reasons.

Cathy: She had, yeah. Her reasons, though, is because she had not finished college until I was in high school, you know. She went back, and I'd had a couple of things that burned me out. Math, I love math. I didn't care for the teachers who were teaching math at Foster, so I didn't want to take it. I said, "I'm- I won't go back until I'm ready to go back." And that would not happen until 1989.

Vignette 15: We’ll Figure it Out

Cady: So, my life is over after this. I have no hope of going to college. There isn't any hope. There's no money, there's no hope. My family structure is breaking underneath me, my mother, my father, my brother- he drops out of high school, and I can no longer protect them. So, I end up with Cathy. And then I spend this summer trying to figure out what does that mean, and what does these things mean.

Cathy: That's when we were writing those letters back and forth, yeah.

Cady: And I thought, "Well, I think I can do this," right? But I know I cannot marry her and because I just knew this, I just- I knew that there was just hope for us. There was no hope for me. What I do is I go and I said, "Look, so I cannot- I cannot live with my secret by myself and then marry Cathy." It won't work. So that's when I tell her, "I like to cross dress because I think I'm female."

Cathy: Yeah, that's what she told me, is that I don't- I think- I think I'm- I don't think I'm- I think I'm in the wrong body.

Cady: The clothes aren't the attractions to how I felt when I wore them, and the epiphany of that. I thought earlier in life that, two things I thought I found out weren't true. I reason that men love women so much that they want to be one. That's the whole thing, you know, you see all the men attraction there when they do anything to win the favor of women. They get them out somewhere. I had no idea what went on at that point, but I just assumed, "Well, that's it." And then at the other point before, the part, I had an assumption is I would just grow up to be female. And when I was, before I was10 years old, I thought, "Well, this will just all rectify itself." This is what I truly am. I will grow up. And then when I started having facial hair, that was the end of that. So, I wanted to make sure that Cathy understood that the clothes weren't the attraction. It's I want to be this person. I am female in here, and I don't know how to explain that because there were no really good words to explain other than say it like this. And that I can't just- This is me. And I need help. And I- And somehow in my brain, I got it in my brain, that I can tell her this and she's not going to go running off, or she's not going to say no. I don't know why. I just did. And then because I had- I hadn't figured out Plan B, 'cause Plan B was always go back where I just, "Okay, life's over." It's always the plan, always the plan. It was my ultimate plan. I had no other things. Life would be over, so I just assumed she wouldn't do it. And then, she said, "Yes." And then I make-And then I explained it, and she said, "Oh, it's okay. We'll figure something out."

Cathy: Yeah. And then-

Cady: I don't know if either one of us totally understood at that moment-

Cathy: Totally understood what "figure something out" meant.

Cady: Was going to be.

Vignette 16: Cathy Higher Education

Cathy: We got married. Two sons came along. And in 1989 the kids participated in a program called Summer Stretch at the University of Washington. It's out of the John Hopkins School for gifted and talented.

Cady: It's the first time it had ever been done.

Cathy: Yeah, that the UW was doing it that year. And they were in 6th and 7th grade. They finished up pretty much their high school math in that one summer.

Cady: And it just went on and on.

Cathy: And this kept going on and on. I couldn't see them going by themselves out there to the UW.

Cady: Cathy went. She followed them to college.

Cathy: I found a little five-week class to take. I was in my 30s. And computers in the classroom- I did my paper using a Commodore 64 that I had gone and programmed in the word processing. Ten keyed in the whole thing. But that started then for our sons and me going to school. So before Running Start started high schoolers could go to the community college, even if they had not, you know, before they graduated high school.

Cady: As long as you did night classes.

Cathy: And we did. So at this point, Casey and Corey have no math classes they can take at the high school. What are we supposed to do? So we started tickling out to Highline College. Cady basically supported us in everything we were doing. She'd be our driver.

Cady: I was the taxi service.

Cathy: Yeah. And we took a lot of the same classes. Well, at Highline, we did take the same classes. And then it kept progressing. It's like, well, we finished all the math. Now what? Pretty soon, it's like, you know, we have one quarter left. What do we need to take to finish up-

Cady: Our degree.

Cathy: Our degree. And we all got our associate degree, emphasis in mathematics. And we finished in '93. But both of them were 16 when they graduated from high school. The younger one, the day before his-

Cady: High school.

Cathy: High school graduation, he graduated from the community college.

Cady: Pretty much.

Cathy: He did that. We all went on to the University of Washington that fall. And I finished up my degree in '95 as a- It's not called technical communication there at the UW anymore, but that's what it was. It was an engineering degree, but that's where I got my editing background. And they went on. The younger one has his PhD, has a double degree, both in math and, in computer science. The older one has his master’s in computer science.

Vignette 17: Son’s UW Graduation

Cathy: So, the younger one has both the math, and the computer science. He finished both degrees at the same time. He got one of their awards for the math. He got their highest award for the math.

Cady: It was so funny at graduation. University of Washington. It was before the ceremony. And I thought it was the strangest thing. We were there. They had all the little tables and stuff. And I was listening to these two talking. Department heads compete. The chairman of the computer science he was talking about his-

Cathy: Top student.

Cady: And they're the same, and they're both bragging about the same kid.

Cathy: So, yeah.

Cady: This one's from my department. No, this one's from my department. Funniest thing.

Cathy: So, he wasn't sure which PhD program he wanted to go into. He chose the computer science and engineering because they basically paid for the whole thing.

Cady: We loved it because Corey, you know, he's still pretty young. And your parents are like, "I don't want my kid go too far away from me," and that type of stuff. So, and the other schools around the eastern coast that he was talking about. But the UW had a really nice- had a great, great reputation for the grad department there. So, it wasn't like he was going to an inferior school.

Cathy: So, yeah-

Cady: But yeah, yeah, it was that- That was what we did. So, that was our whole house. We showed our whole house held down.

Vignette 18: Wedding

Cady: So what became is we get distracted with getting married. I want part of the ceremony, right? It's all about, all about Cathy, so-

Cathy: And I didn't want that. I mean that's- It's our wedding.

Cady: So, I was married in white. Cathy was married in white.

Cathy: We walked- We walked-

Cady: We both earned those things.

Cathy: Yeah. We walked down the aisle together. None of this, you know, her stand- her up there with the minister.

Cady: Things that, a lot of things that were just absolutely outrageous for 1974.

Cathy: But are now, but are now not that uncommon.

Cady: And Cathy's mom had a cow.

Cathy: My mother had a cow.

Cady: They started- People told- Would come to her afterwards, "What a wonderful-" Things that- See all these things.

Cathy: What we did-

Cady: We brought the grandparents, and we had grandparents walk down the center of the aisle.

Cathy: We had- Had maid of honor and the best man.

Cady: That was it.

Cathy: Part of what had happened is-

Cady: Who- He didn't understand why in the world I wanted my nails done.

Cathy: But part of what had happened- The reason that we did get married when we did, which was in October of 1974-

Cady: Yes.

Cathy: Was because in July of 1974, Cady and I had gone to the Torchlight Parade. Came back, and Cady dropped me off and- And then I get a phone call saying, "I'm coming to pick you up." Okay. Cady's brother David, and his friend, David- There are three Davids and we always referred to him as the Davids. Two of them, Cady's brother and another David were down playing on the Green River. You know, there's this one rock that's there.

Cady: David knew what Taneum Creek was, and we played in Taneum Creek, but he didn't know what the Green River was.

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: He didn't know about undertows. He didn't swim.

Cathy: He didn't know. Yeah. He didn't know about eddies, and undertows, and things like this.

Cady: And then he was drug under, and then he was gone.

Cathy: And we had originally not planned to get married until the following February. But we decided, you know, life is too short. This is crazy.

Cady: After that happened, we didn't wait.

Cathy: We went, took my parents, took Cady's parents to a buffet restaurant to tell them that we were going to be getting married like six weeks later.

Cady: It didn't go over as well as I hoped.

Cathy: My mother, literally, the fork stopped on the way to her mouth. My dad kept eating.

Cady: But he told, we found out later, you kept, several years later, he told one of our mutual friends that was my boyfriend's- my friend that was a boy- my mother that the marriage is never going to last. No, it's not going to last. So, we get married now. We get married with the idea is we're going to help out everybody because it's a good thing after that. But what I came to understand really quickly is my mom and dad were gone.

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: The death of my brother- That was the end of the relationship between my mom and my dad.

Cathy: Pretty much ended it.

Vignette 19: Distractions

Cady: So the word distraction is really important. What happens is my mom decided after dad left, he just left.

Cathy: He said, "Yeah-"

Cady: He didn't- He didn't-

Cathy: "Take care of your mom."

Cady: No, he didn't- Well, yeah.

Cathy: It's sort of what he said.

Cady: He used to do that when she started doing her drinking, when I was nine and ten years old. So, what my mom decided is that she wanted the house to go to us. And so she just managed to get ahold of dad, get it all faired out, and they signed it over, and then we sign the house over. We have a house. We have some place to live. And then now we have gender to take care of. So, it's enough distraction The death was a distraction.

Cathy: Two kids are now a distraction.

Cady: My grandfather- my grandfather is going to sell the ranch in Thorp. And when they sell the ranch, it's the most sad thing in the world to go to a ranch sale. For the people who go to it that need new equipment for their ranches, it's different. And I was supposed to go to that. My mom got rip roaring drunk and I couldn't go to it. So I didn't get to keep anything. Anyway that happened. So that distraction- That distraction's gone. Now we have to care for my mother because my mother lives on her own but-

Cathy: In an apartment across the street from her favorite store.

Cady: Right. And then she simply would drink it herself dead each day, each weekend. And then she finally walked across, walked in front of a car, and that was that.

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: So those things- All those things are noisy. They're distracting. You don't think about- You are in the outside of the eye of the storm. So Mom is- Mom is gone, and then two years later my grandfather would be gone.

Cathy: Grandfather's gone. And then my grandfather's gone about the same time.

Cady: So we decided to just put all our energy into our kids. Not that we're helicopter parents or anything like this, but we just think, we think to ourselves, "Well, we'll just be parents. We'll- We'll- We won't-

Cathy: We'll make sure that the- Yeah.

Cady: We won't neglect our kids. We were neglected in some ways. We're not going to forget this- This-

Cathy: This was our job- was these two human beings.

Cady: And they flourished way beyond expectation.

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: And but what would happen is my identity would never leave me.

Vignette 20: Breaking Point

Cathy: We've all finished school. The kids have left. Cory's graduated from the- from the UW with And he's moved down to San Mateo. Casey's married. He's got a kid on the way. And at this point, it's kind of like- We were just like this and it's like, "Are we going to make it?"

Cady: Who are we? Oh, you and I.

Cathy: Yeah. Are we going to make it?

Cady: Oh, yeah. I was there.

Cathy: Because Cady is just- She's not-

Cady: I'm not a very happy person. And I actually thought, "You know, it's okay." It's okay for me because look how successful Cathy is. Look how successful Casey is. Look how successful these people are. This is a sacrifice I'm making. Turns out that you- Only works for so long. So, let's get this straight. When did you start working at Microsoft?

Cathy: 1996.

Cady: 1996. Yeah, right. This is the place where almost all the trouble starts really where it's had because I always have time to eat, right? Once we're married, Plan B doesn't really mean I'm going to end my life or anything like this. But the life won't- will terminate for too long, You know, everything's going okay. I don't have any sense of future. Never as long as I was a male-imaged. I had no sense of future. I had plenty of sense of past, some sense of now, but no sense of future. Cathy's whole family lives totally in the future, no matter what's going on. If you're within two weeks of Christmas, you're talking about your summer vacation coming up. If you're on summer vacation, you're talking about what you're going to do in New Year's.

Cathy: My dad-

Cady: They absolutely- He said one thing about Ainsley Dixon is he never had any regrets in life. He lived a life with absolutely no regrets.

Cathy: No regrets.

Cady: I thought that was amazing.

Cathy: He- Yeah.

Cady: And everything is always coming toward him, but he was a good model, good. He was a really good model.

Cathy: Yeah. And so that was- Yeah.

Cady: So what would happen is they're all successful, and I'm stuck with me still. And I got to do something about it. So, as age goes along, it gets louder and louder and louder. There I- I met a couple times- I actually I- When the kids, everybody else went off and on someplace, and I had spare time because I was by myself, and sometimes I would cross dress. And now it's- It just made it worse because it just reminded me, just reminded me.

Vignette 21: Cady Being a Mom

Cady: So, then along comes a grandchild. The mom is just sickly all the time, or just doesn't want to care for the kid as much as maybe she could have. So, I'm- I- I-

Cathy: And what- When he was- When Colby was one month old she had to have her gallbladder removed. So, I mean-

Cady: There was a lot- There was a lot of things.

Cathy: There was a lot of illness like that.

Cady: But the circumstances brought around they need somebody to care for that- for their baby. So, I just became that person. I lived close. I could do that all the time.

Cathy: Became the nanny.

Cady: And yeah, I became- And I thought, "You know, I could- This is like being a mom." I love this. I love this type of stuff, and we had so many wonderful adventures in the place.

Vignette 22: Matching

Cathy: One of the things when we were-

Cady: I am 70.

Cathy: When we were first married, I ended up getting a pattern for some caftans-

Cady: Oh, yeah. Cathy would make us both caftans.

Cathy: And I made us both caftans because that's, you know, long dress like, right.

Cady: You see, we match.

Cathy: Even when I- My maternity tops that I would make-

Cady: Cathy would make a shirt for me.

Cathy: Make- make a shirt for Cady so that-

Cady: We would match.

Cathy: We could match.

Cady: It helped a lot. It helped a lot.

Cathy: Yeah. Well, the baby is yours too. It's not just mine. So this is a way to put us together.

Cady: So, our relationship was weighted that way. Right? So, the wedding is not just your wedding, it's our wedding. The baby is not your, you know- I want the mom. I want the wedding experience, too. I want the mom experience, too. So, I can do it by caring for everything and-

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: And then as much- We match per all the time now, because we can do it all the time now.

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: Before, we would just, as clandestinely as we could always match clothes in some way.

Vignette 23: Parenting

Cathy: I started in kindergarten with our kids and went all the way through high school because. about 1989, I got a job in the school district as a library book processor. So, I got to see the kids. I got to be there so that- Not- not to go and say, "You guys are misbehaving," but just to be there as a sounding board if they needed anything and-

Cady: He seemed to do just fine with it, too.

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: We worried, if a little bit, and we've talked about there was always a thermometer in it- That, you know, they had their own lives. They had their own experience that like this because- But parents are nearby. But what turned out to be we became parents to a bunch of other kids.

Cathy: Yeah. So on Facebook, I'm friends with a lot of our kids' friends.

Vignette 24: Needing to Transition

Cady: Then my father becomes terminally ill, and he comes back so I can care for him. And I care for him in hospice. And then after he passes away, I just cannot see my future at all. And then Kathy and I are kind of at each other- And I- It's because I'm- She's happy, and things are going. And I'm happy she's happy, but I can't eat this thing. So long comes about 2005-

Cathy: 2005, I find- I say, "You've got to do something." One of the things that we did really early on in our marriage-

Cady: We went-

Cathy: We went- And Cady told me about this book, Conundrum.

Cady: By Jan Morris.

Cathy: Jan Morris. And it's like-

Cady: That's when we first got married. We found this book. So- We read about Jan Morris's experience.

Cathy: And, yeah. And the library sends it in a brown paper wrapper.

Cady:nAnd does it really? Absolutely. And we thought- So- So- And Cathy reads it and stuff like this. And she says, "No, no. I- I can- You know, whenever, if you ever have to change, you know, I'm with you."

Cathy: It's okay.

Cady: I can do it. So, what happened is right around 2005. I find that I cannot hang on anymore. I looked at a picture of me. At one of the things- I looked- I saw that this is the saddest looking person I think I've seen in that picture. And I thought, "That's me." I look awful. I mean, the look on my face. And it was at a fun event. It was at a picnic, and I just looked awful. So I said, "Why, I have to do something." So, I start by looking. And I find Susan's Place. Susan's Place in the Forum Place. And this is when Susan's Place was kind of new, and before Susan actually transitioned. I mean, she herself. And she's just establishing her chat rooms for people. And so, I never- I never post, I always lurk.

Cathy: You lurked.

Cady: You know, I always lurk. But before Susan, I found Laura's Playground. That was not a really early one. And there was- I started to find that now between the Jan Morris book and that point, there were other things we found. There was other literature that we would look at. But she said-

Cathy: She- Yeah.

Cady: In 2005 I said, "I found this place." I saw these people, they were posting. I saw I'm like these people. And I now read up on things they've read. I've read some other literature. The last time I was at the ranch, my grandfather was there, Joyce was there. They were in the other room, and I picked up the Daily Record, and there was "Dear Abby" in it. And "Dear Abby" is asked by somebody, "What do you think of a person who is going to have gender surgery?" And Abigail's response is, "Well, we have gifted surgeons who can do this. We should be thankful for that." And I thought, "God, that's really amazing." I had never read anything like that before about that type of stuff. So I'm beginning to see that there is a world there.

Vignette 25: Two of Me

Cady: Then I start thinking, "Well, I need to do something." So-

Cathy: She shaved her beard. Yeah.

Cady: I had a beard for the one reason they always said I punish myself because that was something I looked at in the morning. I would see that, and I think, "I'm not gonna think about anything else." If you go into our bathroom, you'll see our mirror is cracked in half. And I did that early in my teenage years because I- You have to go as a guy, you got to go and marry. You have to shave and stuff like this. And I just got really- Slammed the thing. And then the crack formed the cross, straight across. And I looked in the mirror, there was two of me. And I thought, "You know, the crack is just kind of how I feel." You know, I feel broken.

Vignette 26: Grandchildren

Cathy: The other thing was, is she didn't want our first- our grandkids to ever see her as male.

Cady: Yes, that was the other thing- As male. I couldn't- I had to be- I kind of felt I had to be male for our kids, but for my grandkids I didn't want to be trapped as a male person with them.

Cathy: And they never called her grandpa.

Cady: That didn't even- even sound reasonable.

Cathy: They never called her grandpa. It was, "Bapa."

Cady: Yeah, we used that instead...

Cathy: That was what the oldest one called her.

Vignette 27: The Confrontation

Cady: So as they start doing this stuff, I don't sit down with Cathy and discuss it. I discuss around it because-

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: And then when the discussion came up, there was a point in the discussion I think, I brought it up, and Cathy looks at me, and she shouts at me, and she says, "I couldn't even be with you." And I...

Cathy: Okay, there's also some things that were going on before that that I found out. And this is the thing is that I really was feeling like she was hiding stuff from me. One of the things was is that she'd gotten-

Cady: I got Estrovent from Costco. And-

Cathy: You know, and I was taking this and it's like, "What are you- What's that?"

Cady: Soy is a phytoestrogen, and-

Cathy: And so she's taking this, and it's like, "What- what are you doing?"

Cady It's like- And, yeah-

Cathy: What are you doing? Why won't you talk to me? And every time I come into a room, if she was looking at Susan's Place or something, she'd close, you know.

Cady: You know what I read on Susan's Room is how every wife- There wasn't anybody- There was nobody that stayed together. Every one of them left. They all broke up.

Cathy: It-

Cady: And there was a thread about how noble, that you have to go forward. You know- you know you're going to lose your man but you're going to- You have to be this noble person and go for it. And I thought, "I don't want to lose Cathy."

Cathy: Yeah, I ended up pushing her to do something.

Cady: So, I- I was afraid to just come out and say, "I want this, and this, and this, and this, and this."

Cathy: This is before gay marriage was legal in the state of Washington. And all I could see really- 'Cause I didn't want to divorce her. So, I all I saw was basically from Conundrum. They had to divorce because that was what England required, and that was what was required here, too. You couldn't stay married, and there wasn't- because there was no gay marriage at that point, where we'd both be female. What- You know.

Cady: So, I broke my promise to myself. I never wanted to have a secret from Cathy. And here I was, I was trying to put secrets up. And it was in a misguided idea that, well, I wasn't receiving any kind of positive vibes like I had before. But I always went back to the part of the beginning of a relationship that we would think- we would, you know- She read the book, she knew it wasn't going to happen, and things like this.

Cathy: But it was scary.

Cady: So, I guess I kinda had, in my own way, set up a confrontation thing, and that was the Estovent. And then Cathy found out about this, and wanted to know what was going on. And I said, "Well, this is this, and this, and this, and this, and this." And then. she blows up, I blow up, and we go to bed.

Cathy: Just-

Cady: We go to bed angry with each other. We never done that before.

Cathy: That was always one of the things that I- When people would say, "How- How do you- How have you kept your marriage this long?" And it's like, "Don't go to bed mad."

Cady: We really always try to solve everything, or at least find a resting point.

Cathy: At least find a common, you know, yeah. And so that was always a thing I'd say, is that that's the advice I'd give.

Vignette 28: Finding a Therapist

Cady: So, Cathy- Cathy has her work, and now Cady has something else. She has this community, which is just not real community, that she's spending time on. And I'm learning more, I see these things, and the Estrovent has an estrogenic effect on me. Umm, I love it. I don't- I don't hate it. It feels right.

Cathy: And I'm feeling left out.

Cady: And Cathy's feeling left out. And Cathy said, "Oh, I don't know how to help you." And, well, let me find a therapist someplace. And I know I need- A therapist is the next thing to do. You can't do anything without a therapist. So, I started looking for one and I suggest maybe the insurance covers it. We didn't want to do that because- We didn't want to- We can't have the insurance do it because it outs us. I have two kids in high positions. I have Cathy working. And it isn't- it isn't 2020. It isn't anything like that. It's- it's more back on.

Cathy: 2005, when it's just basically- Things are just starting to open up for-

Cady: So, I find a therapist, Sandy Fasachi. And Sandy Fasachi's like the first- first- treated the first people in the Pacific Northwest that were transitioning.

Vignette 29: Clothes Shopping

Cady: Anyway, I got Sandy, and then Sandy agreed to talk to Cathy.

Cathy: She couldn't be my counselor 'cause she was-

Cady: She could do-

Cathy: But-

Cady: She could do husband and wife, I mean couples counseling but not separate.

Cathy: But not separate.

Cady: So Cathy got to have her individual one.

Cathy: Just, you know, just to talk, basically just to talk.

Cady: And Cathy talked, and she-

Cathy: Talked, and talked, and talked.

Cady: So, she came- I'm sitting in the car, in the van. So-

Cathy: Oh, yeah. So, I come out and say-

Cady: There we are.

Cathy: "Okay, Sandy told me I'm supposed to take you clothes shopping."

Cady: And I said, "What?" And she's like-

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: "No, no. We have to go clothes shopping. We have to do this today." It was a great relief. And also somewhere in my mind, I just knew it was kind of a weird thing. I kept thinking like, "Here I am, sitting in this van, and my wife's up in that little room telling all our family secrets." And maybe what if she comes out before the hour's up? Now I'm sunk because Sandy said something. Or she comes out and she's like... because Sandy's really good at getting into things. But, yeah. And so we did go clothes shopping. And also Cory- And Cathy says, well, she- Cathy tells Melissa, "You know what I- Sandy told me you could go to Nordstrom's and get fitted for a lingerie there, that they will fit you for lingerie, and-"

Cathy: So, actually what we ended up doing is- This place called Decent Exposures. If you're ever looking for custom made for you, not for everybody else. Bras, pants, shirts, underwear. The whole- the whole works. Or leggings. That's where we get those. But we go there, and again never even batted an eye when Cady says, "I'd like to like to get some sunglasses."

Cady: I like it here.

Vignette 30: Electrolysis

Cady: I found a place to do hair reduction, and have laser. And I had my first laser-

Cathy: Consultation.

Cady: Trial. And Cathy was so excited for me. I was so pleased. I go over to pick her up at Microsoft. She said, "I'm so proud that you're doing this." And I thought-

Cathy: Yeah. Yeah.

Cady: Somehow I'm starting to turn the corner.

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: We're starting to turn the corner.

Cathy: You're finally doing something.

Cady: Yeah, she-

Cathy: You know, give you a little push. Now do it.

Cady: Cathy likes to see the upcoming mission...

Cathy: Yeah. And actually, I like this so much better.

Cady: I like it, too. And when I decide I need to come out to my electrolysis person- We..,. became really good really friends. I've had over a thousand hours of electrolysis, so became really good friends during that time. So she told me- Somehow she started talking about transgender people, and she says, "Hey, I had- I used to have trans, lot of trans clients. And the first one that I did, I don't know if you know this person? This person's name is Marsha Botzer. She and I had great time. We would- She, and her wife, and I would go to theater, and all these other different things. You know, we got to be friends when we were doing those things." And I went, "That's really cool." And I said, "Well, you treated more people who are trans." And, "No, it just got to be easier for me. Because what- what Marsha would do," -she was a Marsha too-, " What Marsha would do was she would screen clients, the variety of people coming in. Some of the people- We didn't work very well. They wanted things that I couldn't give them. So yeah, I just limited my appointments to only women." And I- That I realized, "Oh my gosh, what am I going to?" I was doing laser with her, and I wanted to have laser done all different places, and here she's told me that I can make my client base all female. I thought, "What am I going to do?" because I really want to have more electrolysis done, you know, all over. I had this- I had this problem. I'm going to lose my electrolytes because- And I said, "Marsha," we were talking about hormones, too. And- Or, she said, "Yeah, I remember doing Marsha Botzer's face and stuff like this, and it cleared really fast." And I said, "What is doing that?" And Marsha says, "Well, I'm taking hormones, and, "well, that's got to be what does it. is it thins out the hair." And I said, "Well, what would you say if I was, like, doing hormones? She said. "What? What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, I'm transgender." And she says, "Oh, you mean?" "Yeah," I said, "yeah, see, I hope you don't feel any worse toward me." "No, no, no. I don't judge about people and stuff like this." And then she asked me, "You know every transgender person that come in here, that I've done over the past time, they always knew that they and their wives always split up." I said, "Oh. Well, I actually told Cathy about me before we got married." And she goes, "Well I don't know. I guess maybe it'll help." And I said, "Well, can we just continue to have electrolysis?" And she agreed, and she kept me at $60.00 an hour for a full 1000 hours’ worth of electrolysis.

Vignette 31: Voice Therapy

Cady: I did some voice therapy and her name, the voice therapy person was-

Cathy: Sandy Hirsch.

Cady: Sandy Hirsch. So, she and Sandy Fasachi all worked together. They were all the Sandy. So, here my therapist is in association with Marsha Botzer and the first people here, and she also has an association with Marcy Bowers, who's a surgery. So we had this close thing with all this history, and so I was interested... And I was going to be the last client Sandy Fasachi would ever have 'cause she was- She'd had a stroke. And I don't know if you know Sandy Fasachi, she was the coordinator for volunteers in the Seattle crisis line for like 30 years. So, I got to be a learning frog. I mean, I learned about all the history of what transition was like in the Seattle area, the very first pay parades, all these different things. And she told me all these neat things, she told me things about all these different people. I think it's because it was I was the last one.

Vignette 32: Medical Transition

Cady: But I'm in therapy, and the first thing I asked Sandy is, "Look, I have this problem. I've had it all my life. I need you to help me make it go away because it leads to destruction in my marriage, and all these different things. I need to have this done." And she just looks at me and says, "Well, okay. Well, I'll be your counselor, just see where it goes." Of course, it was really foolish for me to say that because none of it was true. It didn't go away. I just came to a resolution and- But so for the longest time I was in doubt, not a doubter, but I was just- I was trying to wiggle out from under it. And Cathy was always answering, "Where is this going? Where is this going?"

Cathy: Where is this going?

Cady: First, you just want to be androgynous, right?" And then I- And I said, "No, I'll never do surgery, I'll never do surgery." And-

Cathy: Never say never. First surgery was the trach shave in 2015, and then the orchie in 2018.

Vignette 33: First Time as Cady

Cathy: In 2018, my two brothers decided that the four siblings, their SOs, and my mom should all go on a cruise. They wanted to do the Panama Canal. It's like, "Okay, fine." So, there's eight of us. This is the first time that the four siblings, my two brothers, and my sister, and me have been together for more than three days since I graduated from high school. So. you know, this is a monumental thing. So we go on- we go on this cruise through the Panama Canal and end up in Florida. And it's like beforehand, it's like, "Okay, well, we have to fly home," and Cady's going, "Uh-uh, uh-uh. Not flying, not flying. I'm not-"

Cady: There's things you have to through and I don't want to do that.

Cathy: I don't want to do that. Okay, well, we can rent a car, and drive back.

Cady: But even better.

Cathy: But even better, I've discovered that all we had to do is get from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale, and we could get on another cruise ship, and come back, all the way back to Seattle.

Cady: And since we're going to do that-

Cathy: I told-

Cady: My deadname and Cathy, who's down to Florida, but Cady, and Cat, and Catherine, or Catherine, and Cady-

Cathy: Cady and Cate. Cady and Cate. I went by Cate.

Cady: Oh, yeah, she wanted to change her name. We- We- We-

Cathy: Why not?

Cady: We cruised under assumed names.

Cathy: What we found out is if you go down to the purser's desk and say, "The names on these cards, we need to have them changed." They'll say, "Okay, but what name do you want on them?" and we told them what we wanted, "Okay, not a problem."

Cady: So I was-

Cathy: For two-

Cady: For two weeks I was me.

Vignette 34: Cruise Experience

Cady: So I had all the experience of doing that, and Cathy and I held experience of being that couple. We sat at a table- we sat at a table with a missionary couple-

Cathy: And his wife.

Cady: And his wife, and a very liberal fellow who had just lost his-

Cathy: His wife.

Cady: His wife. He was like- he was in- 78 or 79-years-old. And then who's the other? Oh, a person, a retired postal worker who-

Cathy: From Bellevue.

Cady: Who had a- She couldn't stop talking, and she knew every little weird thing about the ship, and she was in...

Cathy: Cause she had been on these ships forever, ever since she retired.

Cady: And she- she just can't - She couldn't- She had to continually do it. And so, we had the missionary couple who wanted to know what these two women had, and, "How did you both have- How did you get babies? How did you get...? And sometimes we were treated- Well, we really didn't know. I think everyone treat us okay.

Cathy: I thought they were doing pretty well.

Cady: But we were snickered at many times, too. But we wore matching tie dye all the time, too.

Cathy: All the time.

Cady: I didn't say, "You know, I transitioned," I just said, "This is- We're together." Always- And down in Mexico, it didn't matter, it was, "Señora," all the time.

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: "Come by my stuff."

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: "Buy my stuff." At the end of the cruise, people came up to tell us how we improved their cruise, "You guys are so happy. You look so happy," and you know.

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: And the one lady in dining room- We would we have our table, and we were gluten free. We have- We're both- We both have to be gluten free.

Cathy: Yeah.

Cady: And we're at that table, and one lady, she was a redhead lady, she kept looking over at us, over all the time. She'd look, and I'd wave. She turned out to be the people next to us in the next cabin, so she was one of the ones that came out just. And then a mom, and her son came by and wanted to- So we had no idea how many people we were affecting.

Cathy: Yeah.

Vignette 35: Coming Out to Family

Cady: We come out on our-

Cathy: Out for- at our 45th wedding anniversary down in San Diego at our son's house, first.

Cady: There was mixed reactions.

Cathy: My mom and sister had already planned to come down. We were going to be down in San Diego, staying at the WorldMark condo. My cousin, Joan, decided to tag along, managed to get herself invited to come down to our party, and she's- and then stay with my mom, and sister.

Cady: Everybody got...

Cathy: Get a free several day vacation, you know, at the condo. And, you know, our other son, because it's- said. "Sure, you know, we can take a long weekend and come down." So here they all come down for- in October of 2019. And-

Cady: We told our sons earlier.

Cathy: Yeah. 2015 for the younger one. And 2016, I think.

Cady: Maybe in 2017? And yeah, that wasn't a big deal to them because basically one was at Microsoft. And-

Cathy: There was a Google.

Cady: The old- the older son, our older son had less exposure than the younger son. Younger son was at Google, he had more exposure. The younger one was, "We have people transitioning left and right at Google. I mean- And that transitioning, they just buy a dress. That's it. You know, it's no big deal. No big deal." And-

Cathy: And the older one was like-

Cady: And the older one went, "As long as it doesn't affect me-"

Cathy: "You can do what you want."

Cady: "You can do what you want."

Cathy: Okay.

Cady: Those are the two things, and to our older son I'm, "Mom." To our younger son I'm, "Dad," and that's cool.

Cathy: To the grandkids-

Cady: It seems that-

Cathy: Bapa and Nana.

Cady: Yeah. The older son needs more separation from the dad thing anyway, so he just put Dad away, Dad's gone. Corey doesn't like things to change, the younger one. So just Bapa, still Bapa.

Vignette 36: Still the Same Person

Cady: The other things that have happened that were big as we go to go.

Cathy: Yeah, we went to Gender Odyssey.

Cady: We go to Gender Odyssey. And before we went to Gender Odyssey, we went to-

Cathy: No, other way around.

Cady: Did we go to Esprit after?

Cathy: Esprit was after.

Cady: We want to go, to go. Then Cathy has a chance to sit in with a lot of people, and start to get big, big stuff.

Cathy: And that was- that was actually one of the scariest things, was because several of them saying that, "Yeah, their person who was transitioning doesn't want any of the before pictures around." And it's like, but that's part of, you know. So, for the person who was talking, says, "But that's part of who they are, and you know, and that's how you know-" And one of them is talking about, "Well, sometimes what you do is, you have a funeral." You know, go through the whole thing for the- with the deadname, and then never speak of it again. And that really is like- So I talked to Cady, " Are you going to do that? Are you going to get rid of all of those pictures? All of our, you know, our wedding pictures? All of- all of those pictures prior to, you know?"

Cady: It felt real cocky. Goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

Cathy: No. Prior to 2005, are you going to get rid of all of those because you've got a beard? You've got moderately short hair, you know. You haven't started growing yours long at this point. And I love when she says, "No, that's still a part of me." And that was the thing that I think I took away from that, and I took away from Esprit. Finally hit that this is still, and I had to explain to my mom and sister, this is still the same person who I married. It's just the gender is different.