Am I Man or A Girl?

Chapter 1 - I Woke Up Pretty

I woke up pretty, with an unfamiliar hand draped across soft features. My lips have never been so bold and full beneath my palm, let alone free of dry skin this early in the morning.

My shock felt like a disconnected circuit arcing towards an unfulfilled action. The vivid depth of feeling didn’t worry me. I’d been tossed into dreams where it all felt real and I convinced myself of the changes, but the bedrock of my waking self was always there. All I could say for certain was that nothing would feel as clear as this moment.

And I really had to pee.

Despite everything else, that at least felt intimately familiar. But no time to dwell. Navigating around the islands of obstacles that always littered the bedroom, while being overwhelmed beneath a curtain of warm, brilliant red hair that couldn’t be mine, I shuffled my way to the restroom.

The angle was wrong. Usually, the art prints on my left sat below my eye line. With groggy confusion, I noticed, no matter how I made my legs stretch, I had to look up. The rumble of the central heating pushed my attention away. Struggling past my hamper, at least there wasn’t far left.

My red-cloaked reflection in the mirror should’ve been a clear alarm, but I continued to the toilet and sat down with my shorts slid off. I didn’t trust myself with a glossy bathmat, let alone my stability on a morning already this weird.

Clearing my bladder also smoothed away the haze. I didn’t have any of my devices with me. So, all my mind had was the preoccupation of impossibilities that refused to go away. I knew my fingers and hands. I’d been through a lot of things with them. These were not them.

It was like looking at a key on a ring, in the spot where you always left your house key, but finding something different. Switching to my other hand didn’t help.

Digging some grit out of my eyes didn’t help make sense of it, but it at least told me I could use these hands.

Not even sitting felt right, as my legs fumbled for the right way to rest.

Okay. That’s what I told my brain as it tried to crunch all these mysteries into a rational shape. Just okay. Like a promise I couldn’t keep that we would finish with the important stuff and then I’d go back to the mirror and figure out what was wrong. Like some ethereal thing got stuck to me and that was the reason I felt weird.

My ass wasn’t helping though, as wiping it (just in case) felt weirder than when I had a strain in my hand and had to do things differently. Pulling my clothes back on took some lingering adjustment as the elastic clung to me without complaint but it felt like a drape diving past my knees even though this should’ve been a pair of my smaller shorts. My underwear also felt sloppy, except for the front. It roused a bit when I adjusted myself.

Eventually, inevitably, I stood in front of the mirror with my weird hands gripping the old knobs. A lovely, girlish face looked back at me. Not my face.

My eyes darted between the slim, pert shape of this face’s nose and the fact I could see more out of each eye when I looked down at it, like it was just some clay sculpture and someone had taken out a notch.

In contrast, my lips were so puffy that unless I drew them back they had a pillowy curve that kept distracting me. The mild awakening between my legs before firmly asserted itself as I twisted my mouth one way and the other.

I recognized the thickness of my eyebrows but instead of being like a brown puffy cloud, they instead seemed like a sharp, heavy press of a permanent marker with a slight tint of red at the edges. And about the color red… it swaddled my head, consumed my ears, buried my shoulders, and twisted brightly in contrast with my blue shirt.

Even with the main light off, it was so bright, and with it on it felt iridescent. Traces approached a woody blonde, but the fiery red curled and bloomed across everything else, like a wildfire at its peak.

“Hello“, I tried. Despite that face, it was still my voice. At least, it sounded the same inside my head. Well, inside of a woman’s head or whatever this was. Fuck.

My arms were slim and coldly free of hair except for a slight dusting of silvery, ghostly ones. My hands felt smaller and absurdly soft. Just holding them beside my face looked like some provocative online photo. And none of this felt like I’d been taken in the middle of the night for extensive plastic surgery. Besides, unless someone secretly shaved my bones down, there was no way to make my hands smaller. Right?

That wasn’t the only smaller thing though. I pushed up on my toes and that almost brought me closer to normal in the mirror. Shorter, way shorter. Well, not like a foot shorter but it had to be several inches. Best guess. I had a dust-crusted measuring stick somewhere in the closet.

With a deep breath, I used those unfamiliar hands to probe around my chest. Something was there, with a definite point to it. It was subtle enough that in other circumstances I might mistake it for being blasted by a cold wind without a jacket. Puffiness raised it up a little and it jiggled when I bounced with a knee.

Lifting up my shirt, it was nice to see how soft and toned I looked. I stopped short of unveiling my chest. Lower, my waist tapered in while my hips spread far. The next part got caught on my waistband before springing free. Though I had gotten smaller overall, that part remained constant.

It was missing some curls and fuzz but otherwise appeared exactly the same as I'd known it all my life. After checking my reshaped rear, my altered hands traced my slim, smooth legs as far as I could go without accidentally clocking my head with the sink or towel rack.

Nervously, I returned to the toilet seat a moment before my rumbly little tummy felt like it was going to lose it. Even though I was so much smaller, that part still had so much to give. When I was finally done, I sat there for a lingering moment and did my best to explain this all to my bewildered mind.

I occasionally had dreams that either repeated some point so firmly it eroded my rejection till I had no idea what could be true or it just told me once and I dimly, blindly accepted. If this was a dream, then it had me. I checked the floor and examined the precise details of the restroom. It needed to be cleaned.

That was good though. It had so many details that if my brain was screwing with me then if something seemed wrong or suddenly altered, or a hole opened up to the center of the earth, then at least I was looking for breaks in continuity.

Ear-shattering fireworks rattled the window after sizzling like meat on the grill for a few seconds. Did they really have to start this early? Sure, it was summer, but they had all night too. All right, now to double-check reality!

The towels on the rack had all the same wrinkles in the same tones. No different decorations on the walls. And returning to the mirror after I was done didn’t present me with a different visage.

It was nice to look at. Really nice. My head felt toasty though. Going to the other bathroom, I was able to find a couple of black hair ties to keep my locks back. They just needed a rinse from when I last used them. I liked to keep my hair long, if I could manage it, but I had my limits.

After some wrangling, I twisted it into a nice ponytail. The front arched like a blazing comb and the back settled into an even bulb that allowed the morning air to wash over my ears. The face in the mirror still looked pretty.

Part of me suspected I would soon find myself in bed, returned. However, despite the fact I rationally suspected this was all fake, I thought it might be fun to try a few selfies. It would be as pointless as writing down an idea while still unconscious but couldn't hurt.

Unplugging my phone from its charger, I messed around with the photo app until I felt like I had some good light and a fun expression. The first was a little goofy. I pouted my lips and gave a squinty expression that, in my head, felt the most like Gillian Anderson. I had the physical essentials to accomplish the look. Maybe it came down to attitude? Despite how much my face seemed to have changed, it still wore my nerves and shyness.

Messing around and emphasizing my neckline provided a few shots that would’ve mortified me to ever pass around online before. Although, this wasn’t me, right? This was just an imaginary doll, a fleshed-out paper doll who matched my movements and didn’t want to leave.

I clutched my chin with my pointer finger and thumb caressing my cheek in a thoughtful expression. Then, I placed a hand against my soft, sleek forehead. Letting those inferno locks fly free again was a necessary sacrifice. It was better, although exaggerating my expressions seemed necessary to really convey anything for the camera.

I don’t think I gave Narcissus a challenge, but I did rack up several dozen shots. Easing back onto the bed, I folded my arms and traced across the fun, strange, lingering changes to my body.

What time would it be when I woke up? I hoped I hadn’t missed my alarm. Browsing through the phone, it showed I still had about forty minutes till the angry, math problems-as-a-shutoff alarm let loose. But could I trust that?

Well, one way or the other, this would resolve itself.

Listlessly, I scrolled around my apps for a while before finally landing on a short podcast about some rural, British mystery. Curling up in my blanket felt roomier but also stifling with the end bunched up around my feet. It wasn’t long before I drifted off. And it was mere moments later to me when the persistent cries of the angry alarm jostled me awake.

The crimson locks that settled around my enormous lips refused to fade back into the blank dreamscape as I groaned my way through the math questions.

When I finally managed to silence it, I swallowed a rough lump and took a slow breath before nervously tapping open the photo app. The awkward lighting did no favors for the camera. Still, I looked nothing like myself.

I kept a tight grip on my phone case because I didn’t trust my slim, new fingers. In a quick video, I saw a cute girl with pouty lips, sleek soft features, and all the nerves that I felt. It didn’t take much effort to find the other shots that I thought only existed in a dream featured in my main folder.

My nails were stubby but I still had enough to pinch my lean arms. Obviously, that hurt and didn’t even prove anything to me because my brain knew plenty of dreams hurt just the same.

Swinging to the side of the bed, I marveled at the tidal wave of sensations. Standing felt weird, but I didn’t stumble. I smirked and tried a few steps around the bed.

I felt good. And kinda felt like taking a shower. It would be a good way to really understand the differences. First, I set my phone over on the counter and asked my semi-obedient AI for something loud and bombastic. News, narrated stories, and even lyrics often got washed out in the wet static of the shower.

Once the music settled in, I got to work lifting my top over my head. After a glance in the mirrors, I had to stop and look. What had become of my face appeared so cute, especially with that red hair all askew.

Even though I’d slimmed down, a noticeable squishiness at my chest remained. They could barely be considered mounds and even though my nipples announced themselves, they didn’t look especially bigger or brighter. With the framing though, there was no doubt that I looked like a topless girl. One who had been conservative in her development, but still indisputable.

My slinky lower half also had the presence of a feminine shape, except for one key feature, as I slid my shorts and underwear off. If I posed both hands over my crotch (because one wasn’t enough), then I looked practically transfigured.

“Hello there…” Practically, as my voice also lingered the same way. I could push it in the direction of soft and high without too much effort, but it sounded neither naturally cute nor pretty.

Standing there naked, I felt good. I expected my key, lingering attribute to be heavily engorged and gung ho about the situation. While it certainly didn’t shrink from events or the relative coolness of the room as the music continued, it also seemed relaxed. Maybe strange hormones or chemicals were lingering in my body from all this and held it back? I could only guess.

But what could so completely change me in ways that didn’t make sense and yet leave some areas untouched? Magic, obviously.

Magic that only seemed possible in dreams. But here it was. Would it have been better if this strange happenstance left me with more than little jiggly mounds? I certainly would’ve noticed much quicker if I had boobs in dire need of a bra.

I made my way to the shower and stretched to the side as I waited for the cold water to turn warm. The fiery blooms of my locks stretched like heavy strands plastered against my soft shoulders. I wished for more than simple unscented soap to lavish on my shape, but it sufficed.

The water spilling over my flesh didn’t meet the sensory concentration of hairs, rather it flowed like a whisper of weighty warmth. This finally got some blood flowing. I was used to showering imaginations, where a little depilatory provided the fuel for thoughts of more.

I shivered, despite the fact I didn’t feel cold, as I tingled more in my thoughts than my body. My hands felt like a stranger’s across familiar flesh. No matter the other changes, that part of my body still worked as expected. It even felt a little painful and urgent with a clock-like throb in the aftermath.

As I finished rinsing, I lingered beneath the showerhead. A familiar melody settled from the phone as I finished the last of my scrubbing. Only it wasn’t the last, as I had to pop back in several times to get the soap out of some neglected swell of my hair.

In the bedroom sink and mirror it was freaky to see someone else bearing just a few reminders of my body. Not bad though, although that was a long story I didn’t even really want to tell myself. But staring into the mirror and seeing the face of a cute girl trying on a shy smile, at the same time I felt it, was nice. Like a lingering fog that wasn’t too cold but carried the dust away on billowing curls. And every breath I took felt refreshed, as if sitting in the sweet spot of a humidifier that actually worked right. I used to have one in my room when I was really young to clear up my allergies and colds. When you live in a sandblasted desert, those are the little things you treasure.

And a cute face that reflected and amplified my mood with playful, damp hair was truly a treasure. Analogies were tough and embarrassing though. The best I could reach for in the moment was the notion of those online programs where it captures your motion and translates it into something cartoony or animated. A vaulting across an uncanny valley and into something that felt truer. What would be a subtle smirk with my normal face, felt like a distilled, heightened grin. The lips helped.

It all felt so naturally true and gleeful. Worry followed me though. This face was amazing and my compressed shape delighted me. But how would the maintenance go? I did stuff for my pores back in high school and when my hands dried out. Beyond some simple reminders to put cream on, I had no clue how to take care of this.

Perhaps it was for the best then that I hadn’t been further gifted with something pendulous at my chest and inwardly complicated between my legs. Not that anything about this morning felt simple.

For clothes, one of the smaller shorts now felt roomy. And I slipped on one of my nicer tops. It angled down like it was fitted without really tracing my shape while bearing loose sleeves.

My brain recoiled from the idea that I looked like a model in a catalog no longer printed. But I had no other frame of reference. I wasn’t lanky like them though.

I had to take a few more shots with a mix of playful and animated expressions. It was fun to tip to the side with one hip bent forward and my free hand resting on the other. It was silly but really cute.

Eventually, seeing the time relentlessly advancing on my phone pulled me away from the mirror. I had to get set up.

My laptop plopped down on the free space next to the couch with the foldout table which had evolved into a permanent piece of furniture. As I let it start up and go through its routine, I cleared a space on the drainboard and scowled at all the little things I’d left undone.

Though rinsed, sorted, and mostly dried, plates, utensils, and bowls stacked up in the side sink. Some trash vanished as I bowed and pivoted around areas that needed attention. I wasn’t a rooted stone, but the beautiful craziness had definitely kicked off some moss and I wanted to keep the momentum going.

After just a few minutes, it didn’t feel as though everything had been refreshed, in fact my little nose tickled at all the dust that had been displaced, but I accomplished something.

Though my stomach considered scrambled eggs and spam, I brushed off the thought and settled before my laptop with a tightened thermos of orange juice. Only once I’d logged on and checked my messages did it occur to me that today might be challenging.

Through a tutoring service, I had nine students to check up on. It was a charter school I spent some time at and, because of lingering events, they had the infrastructure to tutor remotely. They were good kids, although junior high aged. So, that meant methodically picking apart every single aspect of my life that slipped past the screen and offering strong opinions about it.

Fortunately, it was easy to find excuses not to let them know about my personal life. It was stressful but nowhere near as stressful as standing before an army of them in a regular class, in masses of three and four dozen.

As I imagined scarfing down so many things I might cook, I adjusted the feed on the camera. Books on the sides at least made it look academic. But my face. Forgot to brush my hair. God.

Given a few minutes and some fussing with a tie, it was clear there was no way I was going to hide my hair length and tone. At least keeping it back worked with the way the light spilled through the drapes. Sucking my lips in only went so far, but there was no way anyone could mistake my nose.

With resignation like a balloon slowly deflating, I sat there and decided I would just have to field the questions as they came. Not that different from the usual but, considering they were questions that I couldn’t even answer, they felt like a vision of claws digging in a deep wound.

The sharp heat of the awakening summer day didn’t help the tumbles of my stomach or the sweat sticking to the underside of my hair. I left on the box fan to circulate some of the air without aiming it right at me because of the inevitable backwash of dust and sinus destroying breeze.

Despite everything, I logged onto the tutoring client right on time and punched my digital time card. Not long after, the most diligent students, who were taking this as part of an extensive academic prep, joined.

For a moment, I considered reciting a sing-songy introduction my mother often gave her classes.

Good morning to you! Good morning to you. We're all in our places, with bright shining faces. Good morning to you…

I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Never. All I could hear whenever I attempted it was gravel stuffed into my nose, like my body was trying to suffocate itself from embarrassment.

It was the same whenever I tried to be cute or playful: brutal silence. The only way I survived those moments was by envisioning myself as a dinosaur everyone was too terrified to address. They reverted to the primal instinct of holding still, as though my awareness was based on the movement of words, and maybe I’d just leave them alone.

This did have some evidence to back it up. In one of the prior sessions, I accidentally heard one student commanding the others not to say anything more about the topic, so class could end early. Literal shunning that accidentally slipped through the technology.

I wrote up their behavior, but I couldn’t do anything else except save my tears and exhaustion for when my laptop was off.

With a deep breath, I spoke in my best fake-confidence tone as I folded my little arms below the scope of the camera. Stomach gurgles, which I spoke over, betrayed my nerves as I did what I could to cloak my lips without something as obvious as a hand. All that would do would make me harder to hear and lure everyone’s attention.

Balancing an even keel to my words, I ran through a careful summary of the last week along with assignments that needed to be in promptly relating to vocabulary lists, progress updates on diagramming varieties of articles, and levels of deduction.

“Oh my God!” I immediately recognized the voice as belonging to Sophie, who regularly rerouted discussions far afield. Just a tiny slip of my tongue would give her enough material for whispers and giggles for the rest of the week.

I braced myself and presented, “Yes, Sophie? Do you have a concern?”

She shrieked out a combination of Spanish garbled by the connection and the edges of some profanity. “My sister just like shit herself! You did…fuck you! You did!”

I pulled a breath tight and told her, “Relax relax. If you need to step away, do it, but don’t make trouble for your classmates. We’re all here in summer, in the worst part of summer, because we’re here to learn. You’re doing good, Sophie. Don’t throw it away.” Jesus, that sounded so lame to say.

Of course, she had a whole diatribe ready to go about how her sister was doing this and that and screwing around and so many other things I heard before. It was just like normal. Like nothing about me had really changed since last week. I rolled with it.

It felt weirdly normal to deal with the usual bullshit. Focusing on mere subject confusions felt great. After an interval of live lecture followed by recordings and supplementary materials, I let them work on a segment of independent study.

Soon after, my phone gave a brisk “DING”. Checking the message, I saw it read, “MOM”, with the local area code. My fingers gripped the phone and I swiped the banner away as fast as it dropped. Not today. Screw you, not today.

It was bad enough to receive an endless barrage of calls about extended warranties and how I took a trip with some company I never heard of. But I drew the fucking line here. Don’t you dare try to impersonate my dead mom to squeeze some money out of me. Only once I’d adamantly set “Do Not Disturb” did my racing heart settle and my attention return to tutoring.

We had a little bit of fun as I alluded to textbook graphs missing or having an unclear X-axis. I knew I couldn’t really get into anything political, but there was a certain line that I enjoyed bending my toe towards. Really, all I had to do was to be the braking system for discussions that occurred amongst the group. Youngsters that age didn’t know shit and at the same time they had quite a lot of accidental insight.

It was easily the hardest part of trying to cut through digressions into the things they were going to be tested on and try to fill in the holes left by chasms of lost school hours. I had to be in control even if I didn’t feel like I was. This wasn’t a chat or gossip group, to paraphrase something I said to them a lot. This was trying to help them through the summer, so they could tread water when schools snatched them back in the dog days. After that, the group would shuffle depending on need.

Focusing on the standards, lessons, and points for study not only helped to cull a bouncy nervousness, but also helped me reestablish some grounding. Was it fucking weird that no one asked that my face looked different? It should’ve been.

“Can you give us some sample questions, Miss Jones?” Carmella asked that as though just getting up enough strength to speak was her marathon and she was prepared to collapse once the last word left her mouth. I could relate.

Miss Jones? I waited a thoughtful moment, doing my best not to terrify Carmella into reneging on her question. No one laughed, no one commented. And her whole question had been clear.

I even made a point of verifying what she asked and she squeaked out, “Yes, Miss Jones… If that’s OK, I guess. Yeah. About the questions.”

What the fuck? I directed them to some web hosting related to the tutoring agency for a PDF download. While they took care of that link, I did my best to gather my thoughts without losing my mind.

Miss Jones. I was Jacob Jones. I mean, it felt like a little splash of acid on my ear every time they called me Mr. Jones, but I never corrected them about it or said anything at all. What was the point of trying to force them into that sort of thing when they were junior high kids who rolled in contradiction? It wasn’t worth it.

So hearing “miss” casually uttered without taunting sent a shiver through me. It was so very little, yet so much at the same time. It also made my still toasty neck become a raging inferno.

And it was impossible. Everything so far was impossible. People just didn’t get shorter and smaller all over. Faces didn’t turn beautiful. And a group of junior high kids certainly wasn’t going to call me what I daydreamed about. But I was awake.

If I could call this any measure of reality, then I had to accept that the impossible had enveloped me. Sure, the kids could be trolling and they suddenly had the best poker faces. I could be experiencing a long-term hallucinogenic episode either from exposure to something in the house or something I consumed last night. That was just a chicken Caesar salad though.

After pressing a hard nail into my soft slender arm enough that it started to ooze blood, I still have no idea what to think. So, I continued my routine. I made some herbal tea and tested my students on the sample questions. A few of them had their mindset in the right direction, others were seriously overthinking this too hard, and the rest were just patiently waiting to be told what the answer was, more preoccupied with getting that down than figuring out how to get to it. I had to burn a few mental creativity logs to shove the questions into a shape that got them to try to think rather than recite.

The tutoring agency wanted to work in references to a few YouTube videos because someone who ran it had the idea it would earn them some tech-savvy coolness points. All I could think was how when I was about their age everyone was trying to jump on the same coolness wagon and it felt just a stupid then as now. Fortunately, I had some links that weren’t painfully bad.

And I had them stop every so often to point out things they might’ve missed or to direct them to pay attention to this or that more so. It wasn’t brilliant shit, but it did the job. After a small break that included some independent reading and group chat, I brought them through a closing rhetorical lesson.

It all felt so normal until my sign-off was answered by a wave of, “Bye! Thank you, Miss Jones!” Only after everyone present had signed off and I shut my laptop, did I start laughing with girlish fingers sliding over my soft forehead.

How? How? What? Shame I didn’t have anything worth drinking in the fridge, just a liter bottle of some soda with aggressive bubbles to fill my mouth. After lunch, I had a second session followed by independent help until the evening along with an open line for all sorts of questions. I used to do a bit of essay proofing on the side till late but that had its own sticky mess of challenges.

Checking my phone, I saw a few new notifications shuffle to the side of the do not disturb function. Freeing them, two calls and voicemails had been saved while a pair of text messages sat in the same thread. Swiping over to my contacts, I frowned at the presence of not only one labeled MOM but another titled DAD.

Both appeared to be in the same area code, mine. Mom had been dead for seven years and dad for four. I certainly didn’t put those contacts in there and they didn’t even have phones. Well, they had cheapie ones for a time, but they didn’t really use them.

I decided to check the voicemails first, since that feature had gotten pretty good with sifting out a quiet, mumbling recording from an actual human being.

Instead of garbage though, I got a transcription that made sense, for the most part.

“Hi sweet tea this is mom I was just calling to see how you were doing I left you a message last night about what we talked about we’d love to stop by around noon and maybe we could catch lunch things are fine your dad just had to do some routine bloodwork he’s doing great make sure your phone is turned on I know you don’t have the house line anymore will be stopping bye.”

The second one read, “mom again just checking in again to make sure you got my message I love you and I hope you have this in your phone I’m not sure if it’s getting through I think I have this figured out but you know me sometimes I’m sorry I do my best but will be stopping bye to see how you’re doing hone take care.”

So far as the pair of text messages, I was about to check them when a new call came in, from MOM. A tightened ball of irritation clustered in my throat as I tried to take a breath and push the right thing to accept the call.

“Hello? Are you there? It’s mom.”

Oh, fuck! I had to be losing my mind. It was her voice, her voice and not even the voice from my last memories of her when she struggled to speak or even after she had to relearn how to speak. It was the voice she spoke with from my childhood, clear and bright and animated.

I had to say something. “Mom?“

“Oh, I finally caught you. Hello, sweetie! Are you home right now? Is this a good time?”

My mother was talking to me. And I answered, “ I just… I just finished with my morning students… Not too long ago. My phone was off for that. Yeah but yeah… I guess.”

None of this felt real, as though I had somehow separated from my body and someone else was providing the words and holding my phone. That made more sense, since my body was barely my own anymore.

The voice of my mother said, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure of the timing. Your father had some routine bloodwork and since we were halfway there we really wanted to see how you were doing. We can order something along the way and just bring it or we can make a stop at the grocery store down the block and I can make you a lovely lunch. How’s that sound?”

Beyond the impossibility that my parents were coming, I got hit with the realization that the house really needed a lot of help to be presentable for company.

“We could go out somewhere”, I proposed. No specifics occurred to me, but one step at a time. Even though I urged it would be my treat, mom‘s voice said she didn’t want to trouble me. No matter where we went, it was clear they would be meeting me. The me I had woken up to this morning. And that was the most terrifying part.

Nervously, fervently I threw myself into whatever tidying I could do along the kitchen while wrestling the listless anaconda of the canister vacuum hose over to the living room. At least my arms didn’t feel too weak. But before I could even rush across the carpet of one room, the screen door at the front opened and a polite but steady knock echoed through the front hallway.

As extra confirmation, my phone started to buzz. Letting the vacuum sit to one side, I steadily but cautiously made my way up the steps and to the front door.

In the harsh wash of the noonday sun, an older woman stood there with a cordial smile on her face. My mother. Although, so many things were different. First of all, I was shorter than I’d been in decades, so we came up to about the same height.

Her hair was permed like she always kept it when I was young. Even in her last days, it held a rich auburn hue without any traces of gray. The same held true here. She had a sharp, potent perfume that preceded her. In the last days, she was thin in ways I only glimpsed in old photos shared by her half-sister. She was also quite busty and (according to her half-sister) well regarded.

Those genes were half in me. And I envied it. Playful black-and-white shots from when she was my age and didn’t need makeup to strike a look. I saved her bras but felt embarrassed and ashamed to do anything with them.

Though the lady standing before me was elderly, she looked like she popped out of one of those late night ads where smiling old women put on some magic cream and looked decades younger than they actually were. She was my mom though, that much was clear. She had the subtle details of my face, before today and even now, although the details of what I looked like still rocked me. My dad stood nearby with several bags in each arm and a silvery beard groomed with a fancy mustache. Aside from a thick head of hair, he didn’t seem that different.

Urgently, I offered to relieve him of his bags but he only let me take one of the smaller ones. In the kitchen, I felt flush embarrassment that the bag in my hands barely had space to sit, let alone his haul.

Before I could stammer out some excuse, he wrapped me in a big hug and assured me, “I’ll take care of all this, you go see your mom. Love you, sweetie.”

Back in the hallway, mom ambushed me with a hug of her own. I was awash in her aroma. It enveloped everything. With closed eyes, I started to cry. She could tell, even without seeing my face.

“Sweetie? What is it? What’s wrong?” With concern, she held me in place. I couldn’t stop the tears, not that I wanted to try. But I was able to get some words out, “I’m… glad to see you. I missed you. I missed dad. It’s been...today it’s been…crazy today. Really busy. Everything. But I’m glad you’re here… Mom.”

She chuckled to herself and stroked my shoulder. “Aww, Maggie. We missed you too. I love you. Your dad loves you and we’re just happy to spend some time with you. Let me help you tidy up a bit. Your father‘s got the heavy stuff. It looks like you could use a hand around here. And I’m going to make a wonderful lunch for all of us.”