My hair was a sort of dirty blonde in color, and as Jenny gradually began to take
over from Jimmy, we let it grow to shoulder length, and Mummy started teaching me
how to take care of it.  Among my pictures from that time is a portrait of me in
long hair with little ribbons on either side.

Mummy wanted a photographic record of this entire project.  "If you keep on being
a girl, you're going to want these pictures so you'll remember how you started
out and how you looked then.  And if you don't keep on, I'm going to want these
pictures as a way of remembering the sweet little game we played for a while."

I already knew in my heart that, however sweet, this was no game, and it was
going to last longer than a while.

I remember when Mummy took that picture, because I was so pleased when it came
out.  It showed nothing but my head and shoulders, so although I was wearing a
dress when she took it, you could only see a touch of flowered fabric and a lacy
collar.

But even so, I look like a girl in the picture.  There is something about the
face.  I think the way I thought about myself was showing in my eyes.  By the
time she took that picture I was already thinking of myself as a girl all the
time.  It was only when I took baths (I had given up showering as too boyish) and
when I put on my panties in the morning that I was reminded that I was,
biologically, a boy.

And those reminders, I should say, began to grow irksome.  My little penis and
balls reminded me of rough cotton underwear and rough boy clothes I used to have
to wear and, above all, of the terrible life I had led as a boy.  And as the
years passed, I came to think of them as the things that were preventing me from
achieving complete girlhood.

Mummy's schooling continued through all the grades.  It was a happy time.  By her
example, she taught me to love learning and to regard our studies as a treat. 
And having seen the products of our public schools, I think the instruction I got
from Mummy was far superior. So often she would find out what course materials
they were using in the public schools, look at them, shudder, and go off and find
better ones herself.

And her schooling in girlhood continued, too, but at a reduced level, since it
was getting to be second nature to me.  After a year of training, she judged that
I could safely go out, and we would take walks together afternoons.  That gave me
a chance to meet other girls my age, study how they behaved, and adopt some of
what I saw myself.  When I was ten, I started running errands for her-- getting
some of the groceries and taking things to the cleaners.


IV.


Those were years of happiness and contentment.  But when I reached the age of 12,
a new threat loomed on the horizon.

Puberty.

Mom had explained to me about sex.  With her usual thoroughness she had gotten
books from the library for me to read, but most of the information came from her.
 I found out about babies, and about what men did to beget them.

My first thought was how much I would like to be a mother.  Mummy didn't laugh
when I told her this, bless her.  But she did explain that it was impossible, and
she took me back to the books and the anatomical drawings to show me why it was..

I wasn't satisfied.  I might never be able to be a mother, but I had no interest
whatever in being a father.  By this time I felt so completely at ease as a girl
(a rather pretty girl, I might add, which helped a great deal) that I had come
unconsciously to assume that I was going to be a girl for the rest of my life. 
The thought that I would grow a beard and that my penis would start to get bigger
filled me with dismay.  I didn't want a bigger penis; I wanted breasts.

The more I thought about this, the more upsetting it was, and I started to brood
over it.  Life in those years was so sunny and happy that I used to go about the
house singing quietly as I did my studying and my housework.  But now, under this
new threat, I was more subdued days, and Mummy must have noticed that.  And
sometimes at night I would cry into my pillow at the thought that my life as a
girl would come to an end.  One evening after dinner, Mummy found me silently
weeping over my books.

"What's the matter, Dear?" she asked me.  She seemed almost as distressed as I
was.

Having to say it out loud was too much, and I started to bawl. Finally, I got it
out: "I don't want to have to stop being a girl. I don't want to be a father.  I
don't want to be a husband.  And I don't want to grow a beard.  If I can't be a
mother, can't I just be an old maid?"

I smile, remembering the poor little girl-boy who said that (s)he wanted to be an
old maid, but, as always, Mummy refused to laugh at me.

"But, Dear, you were only going live as a girl temporarily, so you wouldn't have
to deal with other boys.  It's bound to come to an end sooner or later.  What are
you going to do in high school?"

"I don't want to go to high school," I said, sniffling.  "Not if I have to be a
boy.  I hate boys.  I hate the idea of being a boy. I don't want to be Jimmy, I
want to be Jenny.  Jimmy's *dead!*"  I started to cry uncontrollably again. 
"Four...years of happiness," I wept, "...four years of being your little
girl...and now....THIS!" I pointed between my legs.  "I wish that had never been
there.  I wish it would just...shrink, or drop off, and leave me in peace."

By this time Mummy was crying, too.  But she calmed down before I did, and she
said, "It's not going to go away, Jenny.  But...well, let me see whether there's
anything we can do.  I don't want to hold out any promises, but...well, let me
just see."

I didn't know what she meant.  But Mummy was the one sure thing in my life, the
one person who could heal all my wounds and solve all my problems.  She would
think of something.  She always did. Clinging to that hope, I stopped crying and
managed to get to sleep.

Two weeks later, Mummy announced that we were going to see a doctor. The doctor
was in a different town, and we had to take the bus to get there.  During the
trip, Mummy was very mysterious; she didn't say anything about where we were
going or why.  But she had the air of someone with a happy secret, not a
threatening one.

When we got there, the doctor turned out to be a woman.  "Dr Madison, this is
Jenny," Mummy said when we were seated in her office.

Dr Madison--not her real name--was a middle-aged, gray-haired woman. She had
bedside manner in spades; I took one look at her and liked her from that moment. 
She was warm and pleasant and inspired immediate confidence.  It struck me that
this was the one other person on earth I wouldn't mind knowing about Jimmy.

That was good, because she started asking me about Jimmy right away. Gradually,
very gently, she got me to tell her the same story I've told you: about my
miserable boyhood, about the experiment we had tried, about how successful it had
been, about how deeply I loved being a girl.

"Jenny's having to face manhood now," Mummy put in, "and she's distraught.  I
found her the week before last crying her eyes out, and she said she wished she
wouldn't have to be a man.  That's why we came to see you."

Dr Madison looked straight at me.  She intended her remarks for my mother, but
she talked to me; this was typical of the way she treated her patients: with
respect as well as kindness.  And she never once called me Jimmy.

"Jenny, I don't know how much we can do.  Your body is going to produce hormones,
chemicals that affect the way you grow and the way your body develops.  Those
will be male hormones and you will grow up to be a boy, just as your mother's
told you.

"Now, it's true that there is a procedure called hormone replacement therapy.  It
means taking pills that suppress and replace the male hormones so that their
bodies become more like women's.  In your case, because you would be starting
before puberty, the female hormones in the pills would make you develop as a girl
instead of a boy.  Do you understand me?"

Understand her!!  My heart was pounding.  Mummy had done it again, pulled off
another one of her miracles, like the miracle of making me a girl, the miracle of
schooling me at home.  And now she had found this wonderful doctor.  It must have
shown in my eyes.

"But there's a problem, Jenny.  You are still a minor, and the law doesn't look
kindly on people interfering with the natural development of minors.  There are
laws that regulate just how much we can do, and some of those laws would apply
even if your mother gave her permission."

"You mean the law wouldn't let you give me those pills?  You mean,"-- I fought
savagely to keep the tears back--"the law could condemn me to live a life that I
hate?  You mean the law would deliberately make me miserable?  What kind of
hateful law is that?

"I want those pills, Dr Madison, those...hormones.  I am NOT going to let the law
or anybody else make me into a boy.  If you won't do it, I'll get a knife and
*cut them off,* I swear I will!"

Mummy was aghast.  "You don't know what you're saying, Jenny!"

"Perhaps she does know," Dr Madison replied.  "Children often see much more
clearly than we give them credit for.  And boys have been known to mutilate
themselves when they were in Jenny's position."

She went on.  "All right.  We won't give up right away, Jenny.  But whatever we
do, we mustn't act in ignorance.  So first, I want you to see a psychiatrist, so
all of us will know just how deep-seated your feelings are.  Your history before
eight years old doesn't quite match the usual pattern of gender identity
dysphoria."  She had to explain to me what those words meant.  She went on,
"Then, I want to give you a complete physical examination, and I want to give you
a battery of tests to analyze your body chemistry as well as we can.  Then we can
decide what, if anything, we can do, and try to lay out a course of action. 
Therapy, if it seems advisable.  But the psychiatric examination is essential. 
Because if we did go outside the law--I'm not saying we will, but if somehow,
let's say, those pills were just to happen to fall into your mother's hands--
their effects would be irreversible.  You think now that that's what you want,
don't you?"

"Irreversible...you mean, once you've changed me I can't change back?"

"That's right."

"I *know* that's what I want.  I'm a girl now, and my body's threatening to
change me back.  That's why I was crying.  I don't want to be changed back.  I
want you to fix me so I can't ever change back."

"That's what you think now," Dr Madison replied.  "I need to be assured that
that's what you'll think after puberty.  That's a big change in your life, and we
will need to know what to expect and how to deal with it."

Now she turned to Mummy.  "If we did this, it would be, frankly, an experiment. 
I've never treated anyone this young before.  I don't know whether anybody has. 
And I'm very reluctant to do anything to your daughter.  Tampering with young
people's bodies is tampering with their lives.  In any case, I have no intention
of doing anything until I have the test results back and an evaluation from the
psychiatrist.  Then we'll see.

"There's another detail.  Usually we require that a patient live full time as a
girl for a year before we take any action.  For someone Jenny's age, I would want
longer than that.  But you say she has been living full time for four years, so I
think that may do. I'll know better once I've heard from the psychiatrist."

In spite of Dr Madison's cautions and repeated warnings, I left her office
walking on air.  Mummy the miracle worker had done it again.

Dr Madison took care of the physical checkup that afternoon, except for the
hormone assays, which were going to be carried out by a lab. But I had to stay in
town for the interviews with the psychiatrist. There were two of these, the
second a day after the first.  The shrink took me through my childhood and my
life before and after I started dressing.  He wanted to know what my relations
with Mummy were like (wonderful in every way), when my father had died (when I
was four), how well I had known him (not very well), how well I remembered him
(just a face now), what my relations with girls had been like (always pleasant),
what my relations with other boys had been like (uniformly disastrous), and so
on.  Not surprisingly, we talked a long time about my life as a girl.  He had me
stand and walk around and sit down, and I silently blessed Mummy for the training
she had given me.

The third day found us back in Dr Madison's office.  "The psychiatrist thinks you
would be a safe bet," she reported, "so the only question that remains is how
your system would react to HRT."

"HRT?" I asked.  "What's that?"

"Hormone replacement therapy," she said, "the treatment I outlined Monday.  Your
tests indicate hormone levels that are normal for a pre-adolescent boy.  That
suggests that if we intervene now, we should be able to sidetrack altogether the
male puberty process that would normally start in a year or so and give you a
girl's puberty instead.  You'll have to come back here every other month so I can
monitor how things are going."

I can't tell you how elated I was.  Then there was the question of how the proper
hormones could be made available for me.  To protect the people who helped me at
this crucial time, I'm not going to give the details here; let's just say that Dr
Madison recommended a course of action that worked.

I was on my way!  Dr Madison gave me my first shot of hormones that day, as an
injection, saying, "You don't know what I'm doing or who did this to you."  I've
never liked needles, and giving the blood sample for the tests had been a
torment, but I actually looked forward to being stabbed by Dr Madison's needle
full of hormones, I was so keen on my transformation.  Then she gave Mummy a list
of the different kinds of pills I would be taking from then on, together with
instructions for using them.


V.


I'll tell you right now that the experiment (if that's what it was) with the
hormones was a success.  I may have been imagining things, but it seemed to me
that the hormones started working right away. I've since read that it takes a
week or two, so this must just have been wishful thinking, but I could swear my
nipples began to get sensitive the very next day, and I thought I detected some
breast growth a couple of days after that.

Then Mummy came up with the logical solution: every Sunday night before bedtime,
she passed a tape measure around my chest and recorded the measurement, both
after I had inhaled and after I had exhaled.  A month or so later it occurred to
us to include other measurements as well--height, waist, and especially hips.  I
still have those figures, and I can trace the way I gradually developed into a
real girl over the next three or four years.  I grew breasts, slowly, instead of
a beard.  They weren't extraordinarily big, but they were cute and perky and had
pretty brown areolas, which I loved.  I would pause and admire them when I was
getting dressed in the morning.  My voice never changed but instead developed
into a pleasing contralto.  My hips widened out naturally; and if my penis didn't
shrivel away to nothing, as I had hoped it would, at least it didn't show any
unwelcome signs of growth.

That was another of the good periods in my life.  Just as my body began to
develop as a woman's body, I was also reaching an age when I could start dressing
as a woman instead of a little girl.  For my thirteenth birthday Mummy gave me my
first garter belt and my first nylons.  I felt so grown up putting on nylons!  At
first, I wore them with everything--dresses, skirts, even under jeans.

I wonder, do genetic girls appreciate their clothes as I did?  Or do you have to
be born a boy to realize how wonderful they are?  Do they take the same pleasure
in silky, delicate underwear, in fluffy, frilly dresses, in colorful fabrics, in
ribbons and ruffles and lace?  Or is wearing those gorgeous things just part of
the day's work to them?  For me it was a sensual delight, and getting dressed
every morning was a celebration of the clothes I put on and of my growing
femininity.  I still don't take these lovely things for granted.

I remember once Mummy found a record of a song from an old musical comedy.  The
song was "I enjoy being a girl."  She bought it and brought it home as a joke for
both of us.  We laughed, but that song spoke to me.  I learned it off by heart,
and sometimes when I was getting dressed, or maybe just doing homework or tidying
up our apartment, I would sing it softly to myself, "I adore being a girl."

Yes, I did wear jeans and a T-shirt occasionally, and sneakers, and, thanks to
the growing effect of the hormones, and to Mummy's careful tutelage, I was as
fully a girl in those as I was in any dress.  But the dresses were so lovely...! 
And the fabrics themselves...has anybody ever noticed how nice and feminine their
names are?  I used to get dreamy just thinking of their
names...cashmere...chambray...
chenille...cretonne...lame'...organdy...pique'...velvet...satin...
tulle...tarlatan.  And taffeta! ...what ordinary, "normal" man ever has the
opportunity, the good fortune, to wear taffeta?  The poor sap would probably be
embarrassed to tears.

It was the same with makeup.  Mummy had to restrain me here because, like most
young girls, I tended to overdo it.  But I would sit at my vanity (yes, Jenny had
a vanity in her room now) and imagine myself like the lovely Myrrhina in a poem
my mother used to quote, who sat at her vanity

With eyelids closed as soft as the breeze That flows through gold flowers on the
incense trees.

The only problem was that when I closed my eyes, I couldn't see the effect of the
eye shadow I had put on.

The hormones had another effect on me: I started noticing boys.  I had never had
any even remotely gay tendencies before that (I hated boys too much!), and
although I'll never know for sure, I don't think I would have if I had had to
grow up as a boy.  But now I was turning into a thoroughly heterosexual girl.  I
looked like a girl, I acted like a girl, and I thought like a girl; and suddenly
I began to notice things about boys, things I liked to look at.  Their lean
flanks.  Their arms.  Their shoulders.  Their butts.  The little lump--and
sometimes not so little--in the front of their jeans.  The denim tended to wear
in that spot, and as a result that interesting area would be graced by a little
highlight.  And I liked to watch the slight unconscious swagger that that lump
seemed to put into their walk, on every one of them, even the wimpiest--so
different from my own feminine walk, which by now was second nature.

The plan was for Mummy to continue homeschooling me until my junior year in high
school, but my development went faster than Dr Madison had anticipated, and I
started going to the public high school in my sophomore year.  The first thing we
found out was that I was in advanced standing in nearly every subject.  Don't
tell me home- schooling doesn't work!  By this time also, Mummy's lawyer had
managed to get my birth certificate and other records changed from James (male)
to Jennifer (female).  He regarded this procedure with prim and stiff-lipped
disapproval, but Mummy could be very emphatic when her mind was made up, and he
ended up having to carry out our wishes.

With me in high school and no more homeschooling to do, Mummy took a job.  The
medical bills had been high and we had had to retrench; Mummy's administrative
skills soon had her earning a nice salary and we were living better than ever
before.

In high school, I started dating boys.  I was glad not to be a boy myself, but
nevertheless I found the creatures fascinating.  I liked the hardness of their
bodies and the way they looked at me.  I liked kissing them, and I liked to watch
their lips when they talked.  I liked another kind of hardness, too, as I found
out the first time I put my hand inside a boy's pants.  I couldn't let him into
my pants, of course, because of what he'd find there (darn!), but I fell back on
the old time-of-the-month excuse and had a grand time giving him a blow job--my
first ever.  A penis was a fine thing, I decided, as long as it wasn't on MY
body!


VI.


I finished high school as Jenny, and I started college as Jenny.  I applied for,
and got, a scholarship that was generous enough that we would actually be able to
get some money ahead.  And then, the first Summer after my eighteenth birthday, I
told Mummy I wanted to finish the job.

"What do you mean, Dear?" she asked.  I think she knew.

"I mean I want surgery.  I don't need these things--" I pointed between my
legs--"I don't like them, and I want to get rid of them. I want to be a woman,
not a chick with a dick."

After a phone conference with Dr Madison, I took the bus to see her and we
talked.  I said that I wished she could have done this right away when I was
still a boy.  She said it would have been out of the question at that age and
that the hormones had been a risky enough proposition.

"But I'm eighteen now," I said.  "I'm legally an adult and I'm past my
adolescence."

"You're past most of it," she corrected.  But she had no strong objection.  "Do
you want me to do the surgery?"

"Yes, Dr Madison, I want you especially.  It isn't just because you're the top
surgeon in this field, although that's important, of course.  It isn't just
because you're a woman and that it would mean a lot to me to have such an
operation performed by a woman. It's that you're a friend, someone who has
already saved my life once, and you're the one person I would trust."

She consented, and we scheduled a tentative date: July 20, which would now be
Jenny's birthday in yet another way.

"There's one request I have.  Can you do the surgery under a local anaesthetic? 
I would like you to do that and put up a mirror in the operating room.  I want to
see the operation.  I want to have the satisfaction of watching you cut them
off."

She gave me a surprised look.  "No, Jenny, I'm afraid I can't do that.  You have
to be out cold, under general anesthesia.  And you know, it isn't just a matter
of taking a scissors and going snip- snip-snip.  It's a very long and very
complicated operation.  I not only have to remove things; I have to give you a
vagina as well, and there's a lot of...well, heavy construction, and
rewiring...that has to be done."

I was sorry to hear this.  I had had my heart set on watching myself
being...well, being castrated.  I asked her whether she could at least videotape
the operation, and she got a little huffy and said this wasn't just a fun thing
for home movies.  So I let the matter drop.  I did cajole her into giving me an
advance look at the operating room, however, although only a glimpse through a
window. I saw the operating table and the stirrups above it, and I thought, with
a thrill, "MY legs are going to be in those stirrups!"

My last memory before the surgery was riding down the hall on my gurney to the
operating room, caroling out at the top of my voice, "I enjoy being a girl!"


VII.


After the operation, Dr Madison reminded me of my request to watch. "We couldn't
do that, as I explained.  But I understand why you wanted it.  So I saved your
testicles and what's left of your penis, if you want to see them now."

"No," I told her--rather brusquely, I'm afraid.  "I'm sorry you bothered.  I
spent all my life seeing them.  I'm sick of seeing them.  I wanted to see them
come off, but I don't want to see them again.  Ever.  Throw them in the garbage. 
That's all they're fit for."

That was a year and a half ago.  Things went pretty smoothly after the
surgery--although we're still making the payments.  And dilation was, after a
couple of painful experiences right at the beginning, a dream.  Another advantage
of being a TS: imagine having to stick a dildo up your vagina, under doctor's
orders!  I've never heard of a doctor ordering a man to play with his penis on a
regular basis.

I had my first man about six months ago.  It was only our second date, but he was
sweetly urgent, and I liked him, so I thought, why not?  Am I an easy lay?  Jenny
round-heels?  Perhaps I am; if all the other men in my life turn out to be as
delicious as he was, I'm sure I will be.

****

So there you have my story.  No magical transformations, no forced feminization,
no punishments, no kinky sex.  Just a loving mom who helped me discover a
wonderful world, a world where I really belonged, and made me at home in it.

Don't think I don't realize how lucky I've been.  I was lucky to have gone on
hormones at 12, but even more lucky to have started living full time at eight. 
Many of my sisters have had to start twenty or more years later than that. 
"Passing" was never a problem for me after the first couple of years, because by
then I had thought myself completely into my feminine life.  I know that many
others have had a much harder time, and my heart goes out to them. I was right to
get down on my knees that morning and thank God.  I still thank Him.

My love to my three dearest friends in this world: Mummy, Dr Madison, and my
nice, pretty vagina, which I still dilate occasionally when I'm feeling
lonely....