Dad

    It was a Sunday morning in 1975 or early 1976. I was about five years old and I was sitting on my bedroom floor wearing one of my older sister's cast-off party dresses. I honestly can't remember what I was doing, probably just normal playing, whatever a five-year-old did back in the mid 1970s. My sisters were nowhere to be seen, probably out in the garden playing Cowboys and Indians in those far-off days when children playing at persecuting indigenous minorities with toy guns was considered acceptable fare. I wouldn't have been with them because at that point the age and gender differences between us were starting to become more marked and they were beginning to tolerate rather than include their younger brother. I guess my parents would have been outside too, or maybe my mother was downstairs. Either way I was alone and safe from interruption, free to be a little girl for a while.
     I guess most junior cross-dressers will have a similar story to what happened next, my father came upstairs unexpectedly, it seemed I was required for some reason. Horror of horrors, there was no time to change so there I was, discovered in girl mode. Crap. Surprisingly the expected censure never materialised. I think he took it as my simply playing some kind of roleplay game, so he played along with it, delivered my summons and went back downstairs. My young age probably helped, I suspect had I been discovered as a fifteen-year-old the circumstances might have been a little different.
    I quickly changed into my little boy clothes and went downstairs. Nothing was said, but for me everything had changed. I was convinced from then on that my parents Knew Everything and so started a lifetime of concealment and suppression that culminated in my becoming a suicidal thirty-something.
    It came as a great shock to me last May when I had the Long Chat with my mother and found that they didn't have a clue. That Sunday morning which had been such a significant event for me had evidently slipped unnoticed into the ether and my bloke act helped my my physical appearance had evidently been of Oscar-winning proportions.
     In all of this the one person with whom I have never discussed any of it is my father. He knows of course because my mother has talked to him about it, but me? Somehow I don't know where to start. I know he'd be embarrassed as hell, and I'm certain I would be too. I'm afraid I find talking to women a lot easier than I do talking to men, at least on anything other than "safe" bloke subjects.
    I guess I don't *have* to talk to him if there is no need. An acquaintance recently had a deathbed reconciliation with her father, at least I am fortunate in my parents that there is no estrangement so I won't forever regret not having "that" chat.
     I just feel some regret that I don't feel able to, that's all.