Yesterday I got the news that, after months of paperwork, emailing, and waiting, my change of sex request has been accepted by the City Hall of the city where I was raised in Europe. The records of that City Hall now say that, a little over four decades ago, a “male” was born with my chosen name. And I will be able to renew my European passport not only with my chosen name but also with ‘M’ (instead of ‘F’) as sex/gender-marker.
This news is such a great relief that it’s hard to put into words and I can still hardly believe it.
As the news slowly sank in yesterday evening, as I allowed myself to think about it and try to believe it, a thought came to my mind: “Now it’s official”, I heard my thought say, “my father’s first child was a son”.
Last night, I dreamt of my dad. He was alive and still relatively young, maybe even just the same age as I am now, somehow. We were both in the dream’s foreground, my mother in the background. And I said to him, “Now I’m also ‘Signor L.’, now there’s two of us”.
I’ve taken on my mother’s surname, too, so officially now I’m ‘Signor L.-S.’, which would mark the difference with my father, ‘Signor L.’. But that’s besides the point: the point here is that I am also, finally, at last, officially a “man” in my family, that my father “officially had a son”.
My father “officially has a son” but he’ll never, never know it.
The Little Prince and the Fox 