X or Y

earlier today, my mom and my sister cleaned out a closet in my parents' house. it had been filled with all sorts of stuff from our childhood -- toys, clothes, mementos, junk -- and mom had decided it was time to get it all sorted. what to give away, what to keep, what to toss.

in among the baby shoes and stuffed animals, they found a shoe box of cards that i had saved, and they left it for me to go through... which i did a couple of hours later.

i sat down on the bed in YB's old room and opened the box.

it was stuffed to overflowing with cards -- birthday cards mostly, with a few christmas cards thrown in -- collected, literally, from before i was even born. my mom had saved every card from her baby shower (when she was pregnant with me) and from my first few birthdays, and i must have saved the ones that followed. there were a ton of cards, all amazingly retro and "vintage," many from people who have since died, or divorced, or grown up. and the last year of the collection was the one from my 21st birthday.

as i picked through the pile and paused to read here and there, i found a yellowed sheet of lined paper, neatly folded into quarters, tucked in with the baby-shower cards. it was a list of names of all my parents' friends and family, written in pencil under the heading (written by my mom) "birth announcement." there were about 50 or 60 names, some of which i didn't recognize... but the two names that immediately caught my eye were written right at the bottom of the page, off to the right-hand side and distinctly separate from all the rest.

one was my full name -- first and middle.

and, right below that, "markus joseph."

which, i learned, would have been my name had i been born a boy.

i immediately realized that this list of names was written while my mom was still pregnant with me. it was a checklist of the folks to whom she'd eventually send word that i'd been born. i knew that, back then, expectant parents didn't know the sex of the baby until it arrived screaming into the world, so when my mom made this list, she still didn't know whether she'd be having a girl or a boy.

whether she'd be announcing my birth or that of "markus joseph."

i'm not sure why this piece of paper had such a profound effect on me, but it was just so fascinating. as if it was evidence of possibility -- of another life. another me.

i folded it back up and put it back in the pile of cards and put the box away for safe keeping.

and then i started to wonder what my life might have been like had i been born a boy. had i been "markus joseph" instead of vickie.

what would i have been like?

who would i have been?

would i have been a writer?

would i have loved cake?

would i have the same gifts and foibles? the same fears and hopes? the same quirks and flaws?

the same heart?

how much might one chromosome affect what matters most in a person?