Till We Have Faces (Warning, this one is religious)

Today I was mistaken for a man. A man knitting a tiny little purple-and-pink child's hat.

I was in the waiting-room of my doctor's office, waiting to see the nurse practitioner who administers my Neulasta shot. The room was crowded with folks waiting for flu shots. One of the ladies sitting by my had Down's Syndrome, and as such people often are, she was quite friendly. We got to talking about this and that, and then an older, rather pleasant-seeming gentleman sat down across from me, and said (but entirely without offensiveness), "Well that's great, a man who knits!"

He was so pleased, I was sorry to disabuse him.

And you know, I really was not offended. Because I am post-menopausal, my face has started to lose its female specificity, and is now, as Ursula K. LeGuin puts it in Left Hand of Darkness a human face, neither male nor female. And with my bulk and no hair, I really could be either, until you see me smile.

And I remember a tiny little Baptist church I visited once in Georgia because it was the closest church to my temporary home. I was the youngest person there by far, and I never went back -- it was one of those places where men and women pray separately because otherwise a man might end up being instructed by a woman's prayer, and that would Never Do. But I clearly remember all the very elderly women, and their deeply kind faces that, other than their hair and earrings, were neither male nor female -- just the face of people who have loved Christ and lived Christ all their lives, to the best of their knowledge.

My knowledge of Christ is very different from that which shaped those lives, but I hope that as I age, I show His face in mine that clearly. And since in Christ there is neither male nor female, why should someone's mistake about which I am matter? And besides, how cool would it be to be a man not embarassed to knit a tiny little purple-and-pink child's hat in public?