I have always wanted the perfect home – well decorated and with a wonderful garden and a kitchen smelling of fresh baking at my hand, and a husband in his favorite chair to be loved for all he has provided. I suppose that plenty of girls want the same thing, and I wanted it even though I was a boy.

I was the youngest of three brothers, and I guess that I ended up being my mother’s assistant. She was a wonderful mother, and everybody in the family would have to agree with that. She always believed that a proper home is a refuge from the world, and a proper home needs a homemaker, ably assisted by a junior – in me.

While my brothers tended to do more things with Dad, I tended to help her – and I wanted it that way. She instilled in me the importance of home, and the desire of my brothers and my father to do things outside the home instead, seemed to be wrong. The home has to be the best place in the world.

But, as my mother said, a husband and father must provide the means, and she said that she had chosen well in my Dad. He funded the household and so he must be the principal beneficiary of the joys of home life. She worshipped him. They were in love. Their life was perfect, right up until they died together, in a plane crash soon after I finished college. I picture them going down holding hands.

In college I suppose that you might have called me gender fluid had that been a thing in those days. I was bisexual but a firm believer in the roles of men and women, at least when it came to home life. The fact that I found myself better equipped to be a wife than a husband.

I simply decided that I had more to give as a woman than I did as a man. It hardly even seemed like gender dysphoria – I knew my role and for me it fitted better into a dress than it did in a suit. I went on hormones and I found that they suited me well. I later researched the role that female hormones had in promoting “the nesting instinct” in pregnant women, and none of that came as any surprise.

I became an office manager in an advertising company, and I suppose I ran my office as I would a home

I dressed sensibly rather than seductively, as a woman. I still dreamt of my own home but because I had no capacity to be a mother I threw myself into making my office the most comfortable environment for our talented and creative team. I was admired and even loved for my work, and well rewarded too. It was a vindication of my mother’s lessons – comfort promotes good outcomes; security allows adventurous enterprise.

I suppose a large part of my life just passed me by, but I never really noticed. My own home was just for me but it was immaculate, and the office was my calling. It seemed as if I might have forgotten my dream of a husband to care for.

Then our company merged with another company and suddenly I had new people at the top. I think some of them regarded me as a bit of an oddity – a large transwoman running the office they were walking in to. But everybody that I had worked with for years said that – “The office would collapse without her. She is the secret of our success.” I had to blush, but thank everybody.

The newcomer who was most impressed was Gerry Slocombe. He was a widower now living alone, and I could see at a glance that he was extremely clever but disorganized and untidy. I knew immediately that his apartment would be a mess, and that it would have no aura to it. Out of the blue I just offered to have a look at where he lived and try to see if I could do what I could do to make things a little better.

He seemed puzzled at first, or perhaps disbelieving, but he agreed that I could visit him, subject to the condition – “I don’t want you trying to change me.”

“Goodness no,” I said. “The first rule with anything is that if it works well, don’t try to fix it! No, I wouldn’t want to change a high achiever like you, Gerry. I just think that if the place where you live can be tidied a little you will find everything better.”

There were no surprises in what I found. What he needed in his life was a homemaker. I made a few small changes but I told him that there was so much more I could do. Clearly I made an impact because he invited me back and offered me an open account to make further changes.

“But rather than a homemaker, I am looking for a … a homebody,” he said.

It is not the same thing. I still do what I do but he has my body now too. It seemed only fair that he be entitled to ask for me to make some changes there too. Of course I agreed.

We are very, very happy.

As for the matching dress and wallpaper, I can assure you, that was accidental.

The End
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Author’s Note: The image is by lindasummers214