Daughter of a Man Who Underwent Sex Change--A First-Person Account

choi

Annie Chagnot, From Humiliation to Appreciation; Divorce and all, sex change and all, this would be a loving family of three.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/2 ... on-modern-love.html

(a) Quotation in the window of print: What I understand now is that these anxious momentd are a small price to pay for a caring, present and wonderful parent.

(b) Quote:

"When I was 4, my father decided he wanted to become a woman. Decades earlier he realized he wanted to be a woman, but now he actually made the decision to become one, to the great shock of my mother

My mother "briefly thought she could stay married to my father and make it work. * * * But as my father showed more of his truth, the truth of the person he wanted to be and become, my mother realized that in many ways she had fallen in love with the image he had constructed to appease the world. As it became clear that their romantic relationship was more a part of his confusion and the facade he had lived behind than the genuine self he was beginning to unearth, they fought more about the little things and agreed less on the big things until deciding to dissolve their marriage.

"She [father] once told me that before her sex change, she had lived in a fog, and after the operation the haze lifted, allowing her to see the real colors in life. Perhaps it’s the bold move she made, the fact that she truly chose her life, that has allowed her to live so deliberately, with such assurance and curiosity in the world.


(c) Note:
(i) The author writes I "wander around my bedroom in my prom dress slightly tipsy."

tipsy (adj): "unsteady, staggering, or foolish from [or as if from] the effects of liquor"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tipsy

(ii) The author says, "I remember that one Sunday he was singing in the men’s tenor section of our Episcopal choir and a month later he joined the altos with the women."
(A) voice type
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_type
(according to American scientific pitch notation; female: soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, contralto; male: countertenor, tenor, baritone, bass)
(B) mezzo (n; Italian, literally, middle, moderate, half, from Latin medius)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mezzo

(iii) The author states she and her father "cantered camels through the streets of Udaipur, ate live octopus in Seoul."
(A) canter (v and n; Etymology: short for obsolete canterbury, from Canterbury, England; from the supposed gait of pilgrims riding to Canterbury)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/canter
(B) Watch the video clip in

canter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canter
(C) Canterbury
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury
("Kent people's stronghold"; "After the Kingdom of Kent's conversion to Christianity in 597, St Augustine founded an episcopal see in the city and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, a position that now heads the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion")
(D) eating live seafood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_live_seafood
(Korean dish "sannakji": live baby octopuses (nakji), either whole, or cut into small pieces)