My Mom | this woman's work

Whining to my mother (a digressive tale)

Jun 032009

I don’t like to whine to my mom, I really don’t. I like to be a sturdy person — a self sufficient person. I like to keep my whining private — you know, between me and Brett. But sometimes I really yearn to whine to my mother because … well, because she’s my mom.

I have cried more to my mom this past year than I have for a long, long time.

So I feel better now. Moms are good stuff (at least my mom is good stuff).

One of the things I whined about is that I’m tired of things not coming easily to me. I want things to come easily. I want to stop having to work so hard because frankly, the thrill of accomplishment isn’t making up for the agony of defeat. I want some reward without any struggle. I want good things to drop into my lap just because I asked for them. (Remember, this was whining — full-out tearful venting.)

My mom, god love her, said, “Well, you’re the girl who sat under the shadowbox and got a cannonball dropped on her head. What do you expect?”

This is true. Shadowboxes are a thing in my family and we all have one (they’re all printers’ drawers like this one in the top picture). Mine doesn’t happen to be up right now because I never did put it up after we moved, which I should rectify like tomorrow now that I think of it. Anyway. My parents had an old Civil War cannonball up in theirs. At least I think it was a cannonball because it was too big to be a musket ball and it looked a lot like this and the measurements sound almost right (I want to say that ours is a little bit smaller but not a whole lot smaller).

My seat at the dinner table was under the shadowbox as I recall and one day as I was sitting there (maybe in the banana chair, which was what we called the old yellow high chair once we grew out of the tray part of it and for a long time I didn’t realize the banana chair was a high chair without the tray and it only became obvious to me when I saw one at a garage sale) when the cannonball tipped out of the shadowbox and landed on my head. (What it was doing in the shadowbox, I have no idea because it was too big to be there.)

Actually, I think it was long after the banana chair but then what do I know? I was hit in the head with a Civil War cannonball as a child and my memory is faulty.

The point my mom was making is that it’s ok to be unhappy when good things don’t drop in your lap and instead cannonballs drop on your head but for some of us, life is just a little bit harder. What’s funny about the way these things work is as soon as my mother says, “Oh honey, sometimes life is harder” I immediately began blinking away my tears and started thinking about all the ways life is easier and in many ways good. I don’t know why this is but when people tell me to be grateful, I just feel worse and when people are all sympathetic (especially when they are my mother or my old therapist who reminded me of my mother), it makes me feel better and not so entrenched in my misery.

Let this be a lesson to everyone who is afraid to offer compassionate sympathy in case it might make people soft! It is my belief that compassionate sympathy actually toughens people up.

Back to my mother. She also told me that my kids aren’t being ruined and stuff, which I don’t really worry about except when I do. I just keep thinking that I didn’t want to homeschool the kids so they could sit around and watch me work even though they’re actually playing and laughing and reading and dancing to Hairspray and running around outside and stuff. Because when I feel bad, I just feel bad not logical.

It also helps that Noah got his Hebrew/Religious school report card with lots of teacher gushing about his kindness and leadership abilities and general smarts, which proves I haven’t broken him (yet). (As an aside, when I met his teacher at some event or other, he asked me where Noah went to school and I said he was homeschooled and the teacher was surprised but then said, “I thought he might be in some kind of gifted program because he’s so bright but homeschooled! Really! Well, that’s wonderful! It’s certainly working for him!” Let me indulge this bragging because lord knows I’ve taken homeschool heat on this blog and I didn’t brag when it happened but today I’m feeling moody and self-indulgent.)

So the kids. They don’t seem to be suffering by having a mother who lives in the basement and only comes up to make banana muffins and force them to vacuum and say, yes, you can play Pandora on my iPod but put it back and other motherly things. I guess I don’t remember my mom being all that, you know, present for me either. I mean, she was always comfortingly there but she wasn’t full of games and tricks and activities so I guess I will cut myself some slack. Only with homeschooling you theoretically are supposed to do stuff with them like build catapults and fingerpaint. Of course Noah never wanted any of that, preferring to play alone without me bothering him (and ask his Hebrew teacher, he’s fine, right?) but it seems like Madison would be more amenable or even enthusiastic about lots more hovering so I wish I could do more hovering.

Talking to my mom made me think that actually what I ought to do is ask Noah to break out the science kits with her because she’d love it and he wouldn’t mind if I don’t make him do it all the time (he is wonderfully easy-going about doing stuff as long as we’re reasonable and even sometimes when we’re not).

You know, sometimes I forget that my kids get a different perspective. So even while I’m hamstrung with guilt over here, it might be that Noah is growing up feeling important and needed. It might be that one reason he doesn’t bitch about picking up the living room or making lunch for Madison or sitting on the front porch with his book so he can keep an eye on her scootering is that he knows I really need him to do these things and I really appreciate it. Perhaps it’s even — dare I think? — a good thing that I can’t do the mothering I want to do. Maybe it sucks for me but isn’t so lousy for the kids after all.

Or maybe I’m just justifying the reality of our lives right now.

(sigh)

In any case, my parents glued the cannonball into the shadowbox with superglue after it fell on my head and I do believe my dad got it in the divorce. (I’m pretty sure he got the other civil war bullets so he likely got that one, too. My mom got the pregnant girl figure from WWII that says “Kilroy was here” so I think she got the better deal.) In any case, it hasn’t dropped on anyone else’s noggin so at least my suffering saved another person from a headache. I can take some comfort in that anyway.

(Madison is going to love the shadowbox. Now I just need to figure out where to put it and where in the hell I put all the little tiny things I had in it. Hmmmm.)

I have not always been honest

The Story of My Life 7 Responses »

Apr 162009

I’m pretty sure this is the last of these posts for now.

I’ve not always been honest with myself about Joaquin. It took me a long time to get over him — well, not him so much as the relationship. I get into these funks where I’m thinking on it hard (I’m in one now, obviously) and I used to think it was about him but now I know it’s me trying to figure out me. Why did I love him? Why couldn’t I stay away? What part of me was hurting then and is it still present now? And this time around I’m also wondering, how was I complicit?

In one version of the story of our relationsip’s demise (this is the version I worked over for years), Joaquin throws me over several times. First with someone who went to high school with us, then with a woman with my exact same first name thereby obliterating me. (Even now I occasionally meet someone who can’t quite place me and then it ends up they have me mixed up with her.) In this version of events, I am the victim. Sure, I’m jealous and clingy but he’s the one ripping me apart into teensie-weenie little pieces and then using my attachment (addiction) to him to keep me in his back pocket as a just-in-case. This is all true.

But the other version of the story is also true and it’s one I hadn’t thought on much that has to do with my culpability. So I was thinking about how he used to say that I loved him but I didn’t like him and thinking about how it took me a few years (full of slammed locker doors, hysterical phone calls on either side and heady reunions) to realize he was right. I thought then that he probably didn’t care but maybe he did. It’s probably not a whole lot of fun to realize your girlfriend doesn’t like you all that much.

I disapproved of a lot of his choices and I disagreed with a lot of his values but I was so insecure and so defensive that I couldn’t own this and instead I would try to tear him down the same way he tried to tear me down. Because I saw him as invincible, I never thought that I could really hurt him even though I wanted him to hurt because he hurt me. But while I’m the type of gal whose feelings get hurt if the wind blows too hard, Joaquin was made of tougher stuff and so I had to work a lot harder and I could get pretty freakin’ mean. I’ve forgiven him for being a jerk but (I realize as I type this) I need to forgive myself for my own jerkiness so that I won’t be so desperate to pretend it was all on him.

(There was a lot of unkindness in me during the five years between 15 and 20; I took all of my essential hurt and tried to spread it around.)

I tried to control him as much as he tried to control me (again, with far less success since he had oodles more self-confidence than I did). I remember once in particular that I tried to get him to quit his band and focus more on his painting and I couched it in concern about his art but the truth was I was just tired of his groupies. I mean, if you really love someone you don’t try to make them give up something that they love.

I don’t really know when we stopped loving each other but I always think that if I’d just gotten over it when he dumped me for the girl in our class, we could have remained fond of each other. But I couldn’t let him go. And I guess he couldn’t let me go because he didn’t for a long time.

I used to feel invisible with him but what did I want him to do to prove that he saw me? I felt hemmed in by my girlhood — it was certainly easier for him to be a boy in a band than it was for me to be a girl who wrote poetry — but that wasn’t his fault. I was jealous of his autonomy and the room the world gave him to step out of bounds. I’d get mad when he’d declaim on feminism and ignore what I was going through right in front of him. I had sex with him and it freed him; I guess I can’t really hold him responsible for not seeing how it locked me down. He was 16! Then 17! (The last time we slept together I want to say that I was 19 and he was 21 but honestly I’m just not sure.) We were young and dumb and locked in a pattern that wasn’t kind to either of us.

If we’d just let each other go earlier! If only we hadn’t raked each other over hot coals and trampled over any good feelings we might have had for each other!

THAT is my big Joaquin regret — that I wouldn’t let it go and instead helped throttle my first love into a wilted broken thing.

Ahh well. Youth. Ignorance.

(sigh)

And this really is the last of these posts for now. (I got off subject anyway.)

My grocery bill

The Story of My Life 24 Responses »

Mar 242009

(Inspired by AmFam)

Our food bill for the week averages out to about $125 (including eating out). Sometimes more, very often less. I can feed us for a week on $75 without difficulty and have been able to do it for fifty when the budget was tight last summer. I spent $175 last Sunday and that will get us to this next Saturday and the only reason it was that high to begin with is that we had dog food ($14), laundry detergent and dishwasher detergent and toothpaste and hairbands, otherwise it’d have been closer to $150 or less. I also bought a dozen loaves of bread and snacks at the Pepperidge Farm discount store so that was an extra $30 (we also got goldfish crackers and Mint Milanos).

Here’s how I do this:

I menu plan. I don’t understand how anyone grocery shops without a menu plan. I plan seven to eight meals, a general idea of lunch menus and one or two things I plan to bake for breakfasts or snacks.
I am flexible but firm when planning. I look ahead to my week so I know how much time I expect to have in the kitchen. If work/homeschool is looking busy, I need to take that into account. For example, Thursdays are crazy around here. I know we’ll be leaving in the morning and that when we get back will be unpredictable. Either that will be a pizza or Chipotle night or I need to do the crockpot. If I’m going to do the crockpot, then I need to soak my beans on Tuesday or Wednesday. I rarely buy canned beans because I can get more for less if I soak and cook my own. I freeze the leftovers and there’s another dinner ready and waiting.
I can also meal plan on the fly at the store. If I show up and there’s something unexpected on sale, I have enough recipes memorized that I can set aside one of my planned meals and shop for a different one. (When I shop I have a list and on the side I also have a list of the meals/snacks I’m going to be making so I can keep track of what ingredients go with what.)
I add up the cost as I go through the store so I know how much we have to splurge on, say, string cheese or granola bars. There’s always room for splurging because what would life be like without that??
We don’t eat red meat. We do eat fish and poultry.
I keep a supply of staples on-hand that can let me create meals or snacks quickly and without much bother. This staple includes baking supplies, lentils, rice, oatmeal, maple syrup, eggs, cheese, pasta, onions, garlic, potatoes, canned tomatoes and frozen veggies. Stuff like that. So i can pretty much always make a batch of oatmeal cookies for a playdate or a fruit crumble for the pears no one is eating and are getting too soft. Also popcorn is a cheap, high-fiber snack that’s easy to make and pretty much everyone likes it (so it’s good for playdates, too). My mom recently bought us a Whirly-Pop and man, we use that thing ALL THE TIME. We love plain old popcorn but we also love caramel corn, which is a cinch to make on your stovetop.
We don’t eat organic (because we can’t afford it, obviously) but this budget includes some organics like when Madison wants YoBaby and the really good turkey sausage we all like. I would much rather be able to afford eating fully organic and think it’s worth the extra money but it’s not in our life right now so I wince and buy conventional.
I have learned to make something out of nothing. Our budget is low in part because I don’t always have time to shop. I try to shop Sundays (before I had a job it used to be Tuesdays). If I miss it, I don’t always know when I’ll get back out — it depends on work and homeschooling. So I’ve learned how to pull those staples out and make a good, nutritious meal. Meals like: Roasted potatoes with onions and garlic, Scrambled eggs with some cheddar and the left-over salsa; Pasta with butter and parmesan and frozen veggies; Rice with soysauce and frozen veggies, Lentils with sauteed onions and garlic; French toast with the stale bread in the freezer. And then you can, as Julia says, bitch these things up. Like the left-over cream cheese? Put it between slices of bread for your french toast. Add some frozen blueberries for the kids who like it. That breakfast sausage your kid refused might be good with the roasted potatoes. True frugality means you use everything so look around and see what might be tucked away and ready to use.
I use my left-overs. I make meals in part to turn left-overs into lunches. For example, the meal I’m making tonight I’m making so that I have something to take in my lunch tomorrow. I also use the left-overs from recipes so if I’m buying chicken broth for one recipe then I make sure I’m going to have another recipe that uses the rest of the broth. I don’t let things go to waste. Heck, even left-over yogurt can be used in a muffin recipe. (It’s what I sometimes do with the kids’ half-eaten yogurts. Yes –it’s gross but then I only serve ‘em to the kids who left the half-eaten container in the ‘fridge anyway. Left-over yogurt also makes good homemade popsicles in the summer. And if the child is like Madison and prone to leaving many containers with just a few bites left, you can make them stripe-y and the child in question will happily eat the stuff she was refusing in its thawed state.)
I am not hard core about buying stuff on sale the way the true frugal hosuewives are but there are certain things I won’t buy unless they cost X. Brett will budge from this but I won’t. (I won’t pay more than two bucks a box for cereal, for example.)
I rely heavily on frozen veggies and frozen fruit. It doesn’t go bad, it can be used in a myriad of ways and it’s nutritious. (I especially love frozen fruit because the kids eat it alone as a snack, we can use it in smoothies if we’re running late and need a quick breakfast, I can use it baking and if I’m rushing dinner out to the table I can stir it into plain yogurt, add a little cinnamon and call it dessert.)
I weigh my time against my budget and make allowances. There’s a lot I make homemade because it’s easy and I like to do it. There are other things I know I could make but don’t think it’s worth the bother (pasta, crackers, and lately I haven’t wanted to roast a whole chicken so I’ve been buying broth).
The Pepperidge Farm store is my friend. I’m picky about bread (and again, here, I used to bake our bread every week but that’s not in the cards for me these days) and I buy whole wheat without high-fructose corn syrup or transfats and that stuff’s expensive. I can get stale-ish bread at Pepperidge Farm that’s just fine for PB&J and turkey sandwiches for much less than at the store. I can also buy goldfish crackers for about 1/3 of the grocery store price. I buy lots of boxes and dump ‘em out into big glass jars on our counter so the kids can scoop their own.

It takes a lot of planning but the planning has become second-nature. I keep an eye on our diet for the whole day so if the kids have, say, pancakes in the morning (just about every Wednesday I make pancakes or waffles because it’s Noah’s paper route day and it’s my way of sending him out into the wide, wide world well prepared) then I’m not going to make them pasta that night. Or if they have Mac & Cheese for lunch (as an aside, I do make boxed Mac & Cheese but I’ll buy extra macaroni pasta and add it to the box to double the pasta and make left-overs for the next day’s lunch) I’m going to fix something for dinner with more protein.

Sometimes I can stretch a meal plan beyond it’s limit by sending Brett out for a mini grocery shopping. I’ll give him a list and a $25 budget and he’ll come back with stuff to get us to when I have time to do a major shopping. There’s a lot you can do with eggs, milk and a chunk of cheese if you have the right staples in your cupboard.

I didn’t realize how hard this was to do out of the gate until our grocery bill shot up while Brett was in charge. I grew into cooking for our family but early on in our marriage with children, I knew that one of my jobs if I was home with our kids was to make money by saving money. I took it seriously and read a lot about it. I have had to be flexible about my limits — both monetarily and time-wise. For awhile I kept blowing our budget because I wanted to pretend we would never get take-out and that I’d always make everything — even crackers — from scratch. It wasn’t realistic. (However those homemade crackers were delicious!)

Now this is all second nature to me. The routine is easy and I’m teaching it to the kids. Noah usually votes to skip out on shopping these days but I’m training Madison like I trained Noah. They help me menu plan, weigh in on what sounds good, check the cupboards for what we’re missing and they help shop. I teach them how to read shelf tags, explain when the sale isn’t really a deal and we read labels. I explain when cheaper isn’t better and when it is and they are learning to pick out decent produce. Noah’s become really good at shopping and I imagine Madison will, too.

I talk to them the whole time I’m shopping about what I’m doing. I think out loud while I’m there so they know why I’m scrapping the eggplant dish (no good eggplants) and how I’m going to replace it. They also help scan at the self checkout and then unload the groceries. My kids? They have a lot of ownership about feeding the family because they participate in it. They don’t always want to eat what I cook (the big one is the picky one) but the saving money part is a game they want to win.

Further, they know how to wrap up their sandwiches for a snack later and Madison has learned how to scrape her left-0ver yogurt into a popsicle mold. Madison — like Noah before her — helps make the pancakes, waffles, muffins, etc. (As an aside? Left-over waffles on Wednesdays are Noah’s favorite afternoon snack.)

Probably they will grow up and want to eat out every single night and never, ever enter a grocery store or making any darn thing from scratch but at least they’ll be able to feed their families decently and within budget if they have to.

Why this transition has been hard

The Story of My Life 14 Responses »

Mar 172009

When I was nine years old and in the second half of third grade, my big sister Erica introduced me to her best friend’s little sister who was in fourth grade. The third and fourth grade had recess together but we generally didn’t socialize with one another because in elementary school even a year can make a big difference. Anyway, Erica introduced me to Jennifer because by then we knew I was skipping fourth grade and she’d offered to take me under her wing and get me ready for the more demanding social world of fifth grade.

Jennifer, even at ten or eleven, was a very motherly sort of person. She was extremely nice and outgoing and round in a cozy kind of way. I felt like a big shot — and a little bit over my station — to be hanging with her on the playground.

That day was cold and snowy. The kids had worn down an icy path from the doors to the school all the way across the field where the boys would play soccer. All the big kids were lined up and they were taking turns running and then sliding across the slippery stretch. Normally this was not something I would do. Normally I would be waiting for my turn at the swings. But Jennifer encouraged me to give it a try and feeling adventurous in more ways than one, I ran and slid for one heady moment before my legs went out from under me and I landed right on my tailbone.

The air went out of me. I thought I was dying. I didn’t think it was possible to lose my breath so completely and still live. Somehow I turned over and scrabbled to my knees, trying to crawl away from the kids who were crowding around me. I was dying — I was sure of it — and everyone was just standing around helpless, watching. The playground aide finally got there and knelt down to listen to me wheeze.

“Get them away from me!” I managed to say, embarrassed to be so stunningly incapacitated in front of the fourth graders who would be next year’s classmates. My breath was coming back and I wasn’t going to die but I very nearly wanted to because I was so humiliated. I wanted to go home. But my mom wasn’t home that day. My mom was always home but that day she wasn’t.

The thing about writing memoir is there’s what actually happened, which is always open for discussion, and how you remember it, which is still true. I have always believed that what we remember has its own honesty even when it’s wrong. I don’t know where my mom was that day. But what I remember is that she was gone because she was applying to go to school so she could go to work. And what I remember is that this was good news (for her) and that she was clearly happy and excited about school/work but that this felt like a betrayal because not only was she not home that day, she was happy not to be home that day. I needed her and she wasn’t there and she was happy not to be there. Of course she didn’t know I would fall and need her. But this didn’t matter to me. My memory is of being abandoned even though I know for a fact that this isn’t true.

That is how that part of that day is burned into my brain. Sitting painfully at school. Riding the bus home biting back tears. Getting off at the neighbor’s house instead of my own and trying not to cry until my mother got home.

There are other parts of the day that are missing. Like I am sure that before I fell that I was neutral about my mom being gone because she didn’t enter my mind much except as my mother (i.e., she didn’t exist without me) and going to the neighbor’s after school meant Atari and Hostess snacks — two things sorely missing from my own home. Which is to say, this day — as traumatic as it was — was nothing outside the ordinary, really. Kids fall down. Moms have appointments. Neighbors step in. But still this day looms large in my mind because it’s all mixed up in my mom going from housewife to worker, from wife to single mother. Even though it was three more years before my dad left, I’ve imbued that day with heavy meaning, as if it symbolized everything that came after.

I have been thinking a lot — and writing some here — about how our kids’ memories aren’t always true but still feel true and how small hurts grow into something bigger with the weight of hindsight. And how much of this is beyond me, what my kids remember.

Noah is the age I was when my parents divorced. My adolesence was bleak and lonely. I understand now why this was — how overwhelmed my mother was — but given my natural self-centeredness (the entitlement that is a child’s birth right), I only know that I felt I was left to fend for myself. This is why I’m overreacting to having a job that takes me away two days a week.

Objectively I know it’s ridiculous. It’s two days a week, for crying out loud! But my panic/fear is so heartfelt that it feels like instinct even though I know it’s not. I know things are totally different for Noah. I know that he’s had a better sense of me as a person without him than I ever had of my mother. After all I’ve been building a life of my own since I began writing essays during his naps when he was a baby. I honestly had no idea my mother would want any life other than the one she had looking after me and my siblings until the day she announced she was going to school. It was a shock to me. There’s been no shock to Noah. And then, his parents aren’t divorcing. His father isn’t leaving. He is not me and his family isn’t the one I had and the pattern isn’t repeating.

Still.

I love this new job and I know it’s the right thing for us as a family. There’s no question about that. I am excited about what I’m doing and looking forward to the projects we’re unfolding. I feel extraordinarily lucky for the flexibility and that I’m doing something that interests me and having the pressure off to be hunting for work has been like taking off a corset I didn’t even know I was wearing. All of that is good. I know that it’s good.

Still.

It’s almost a sense memory. Like hearing the whine of a dentist’s drill and feeling your teeth ache even if you’re not the one in the chair. I feel like my family is about to split apart without my consent. Even though this is not the same path. Even though we are writing a different story.

Writing this down makes me think that no matter what had happened this year that it would have been a hard year for me. I guess I’ve seen it coming since Noah hit his tweens. My own memories have been coming up fast and technicolored and I catch myself near tears for reasons I don’t always understand but can trace back to my childhood. I guess I just need to live past it the way you have to push through the hardest part of anything. Maybe it’ll be easier when Madison turns twelve and I’ve already seen one child get through it and live down my memories.

You know, I think I’m with Willa Cather who said that most of a writer’s material “is acquired before the age of fifteen.” I’m just revisiting it in different ways.

The night my world caved in

Parenting, The Story of My Life 53 Responses »

Feb 182009

exercise I am blurry on the details. Both my parents were home, which makes me think it may have been a weekend. (My dad traveled most weekdays.) Also it was summer. I know this because I was in my underwear and a t-shirt. We were not a walk-around-in-your-underwear kind of family (not like my kids who regularly streak down the hall in little else) and I remember feeling quite daring for wearing a t-shirt and underwear to bed like my friend said she did. So I know I was already feeling a little over-exposed. And it must have been evening since I was (un)dressed for bed but I’m not sure how old I was. I want to say ten, maybe. Maybe eleven. It was before the divorce (because my dad was there) so let’s say ten.

I can’t remember — did my parents call me downstairs? Or did I come down to tell them something on my own? I also don’t remember exactly what they said but I do remember their worried, compassionate wrinkled brows and their assurances that they loved me. And I remember something vague about my dad having been a fat kid and how he didn’t want me to suffer the way he’d suffered. (But this adds to my confusion — maybe my father wasn’t there. Maybe he left it to my mom to tell me and I remember him being there because I remember my mom saying this. Or maybe she said this after this initial confrontation. It’s all a blur.)

I know they told me I was putting on a little too much weight, that maybe I needed to watch it a little because I was getting, well, I was getting chubby.

This is what stays with me: The cold, cold shame freezing my stomach and making my vision turn wide then small. My awareness of my physical vulnerability in my t-shirt and underwear. My want to disappear, pull a blanket over me. And my shock because no one — NO ONE — ever told me I was fat. No one had ever said these words to me. So the irony is that my parents wanted to protect me from the cruelty of other children but the only people who had ever told me I was fat were my parents who were telling me now. And this is also what stays with me: that spinning, empty feeling around my limbs as I realized that I did not know myself or my body. That my legs and arms and tummy were no longer close and familiar but were enemies bent on fooling me. Where I had felt strong and pretty, I now knew I had been mistaken and then I realized I had been a fool walking around in the world feeling good about myself because it was a secret from me, the way that other people saw me. And that was the shame that has, frankly, never left me. And this is a shame that I still feel around my family more than I feel it around anyone else because they were the ones to tell me.

It sounds like I’m damning my parents and I’m not. My parents really were trying to be helpful. I believe their intentions were good and loving because the bulk of my experiences otherwise at that time in my childhood were good and loving and supportive and encouraging. So I forgive them for doing their best even though it ended up causing me harm. My father was a fat kid and he carried those scars. On the other hand, my mom was always a skinny, skinny kid and likely didn’t know what to make of her sturdy, stocky daughter. Perhaps I was getting too chubby although pictures I have of that time show only me at my most Dawnest self — neither big nor small. Plain, sturdy, short of limb and stern of face.

I do wonder though what they thought I would do as a ten or eleven year old. We already ate well because my mom controlled the food in our cupboards and on our dining room table. We had lots of fruits and veggies; we had few sweets or processed food. I was one of the few kids who never had Hostess cupcakes in my lunch and when we drank kool-aid, she made it with a fraction of the sugar. I rode my bike a lot, too, although truth be told, I was more of a bookworm. My body at that age (I say, gazing at the pictures) was simply a sturdy, stocky body and this I already knew. My best friend was younger and a full head taller with long, long legs and her tummy never curved out in her bathing suit. But that was how she looked and this was how I looked and it didn’t occur to me that one was better than the other until I heard it. Until my parents told me directly and until I overhead adults talking about Annie’s body and how they envied her her legs, shaking their heads in rueful admiration.

What happened after this momentous day is that I quit walking like I was the person inhabiting my limbs. I felt self-conscious as I moved through space. I doubted the me I saw in the mirror and no longer trusted my ability to know what I looked like. I began to look at other people with suspicion and self-consciousness. In short, I became less likely to want to run or ride or dance or be active anyplace people might see. Which is obviously what my parents were trying to avoid. And this has never left me. Nor has the feeling of powerlessness over my body, this sense that it will do what it wants and I am disconnected — body separate from soul. This is a disconnect that feels like I am a poorly dubbed movie with a body that will not co-operate with my thoughts.

I think about this so much lately because I am now a mother to a sturdy, stocky daughter and I feel like high-kicking the world under its collective chin when I think of anyone — ANYONE — visiting any of this on her. I know she is beautiful like I knew I was beautiful. Because looking back, I can see that my parents were wrong. They were wrong to tell me and they were wrong in their assumptions in the first place because I wasn’t fat. I was lovely. And strong and sturdy and exactly how I was meant to be. I know this because my mom fed me well and I rode my bike and ran around the neighborhood and so the body I carried was the perfect body for me. But I can’t get back to that place and so I’m deathly afraid that someone with the best intentions will steal Madison’s sense of self.

So I will tell you now: My daughter is perfect. And so is my son. They are exactly who they are meant to be. They own the ground they walk over. They own the air they move through. They are grace even when they stumble. They are strong and free and masters of their beings. Their bodies will change — filling and stretching — and the change will be perfect even during those awkward times when their knees don’t seem to work right and their elbows knock into things. I feed them well, they run around — they are nourished and active and so I won’t let anyone else’s worries come to visit them.

When we talk about health, we don’t talk about weight. When we say “diet” we mean “food you put in your body.” We mean vitamins and minerals and diversity in your menu. We get off the elliptical trainer or back home from a walk or a run and say, “Wow, that really helped my stress levels! That made me feel strong! I’m going to sleep well tonight!” Because that’s the equation that will build the bodies they are meant to have and those bodies may be slim or round. They may be heavier or lighter or taller or shorter but they will be perfect and my children will never ever ever (god willing) have to lose ownership the way I did when I was ten.