As someone who is not extremely familiar with the transition process, much less how they affect a family, I found this short story very intriguing and insightful, despite it being fiction. The confusion our main character, Melinda, goes through only adds to this experience.
Melinda wondered if Jonas would have ever made this decision without the therapist leading him there. Another woman, she thought, might be angry with the therapist, angry with Jonas for having a fake heart attack when he was supposed to be working and for taking an early retirement and having something as inconvenient as the mind of a woman inside the body of a man. Surely she would be angry.” Pg 102
I think the conflict here is extremely valuable to the story; isn’t this what any woman in her shoes would be thinking? She isn’t sure how to respond to this situation, though she mentions at least twice how nice it would be to be someone’s “partner” instead of someone’s “wife”. The sentence “Surely she would be angry.” is a clear indication that she knows how most women would react; probably very similarly to her vulgar sister who made a comment about not wanting her husband, Roland, “getting his thing chopped off”. But Melinda doesn’t feel that way. She seems almost excited about the changes in her husband, noticing the newer, softer skin and sweeter smell of him. In the last sentence, when they are at the egg art exhibit, she decides she likes the “idea of the surprise inside the egg, something special and hidden and fine, something to make you catch your breath.” (Pg 112) I believe, personally, she is making metaphor of her husband’s transition to a woman and the pleasant changes and surprises it could hold for their family.