Delighting in Fatness

January 21st, 2010 Musings

A few days ago I wrenched my skinny shirts from their hangers, folded them into a neat pile, and set it on my dresser.

This triumphant act was months–no, years–in the making. Seriously. I cannot overstate my emotional attachment to my skinny shirts, meaning those shirts that only fit properly when I’m eating sparingly and well, and exercising vigorously and often. In other words, those shirts I never wear. Or wear happily, at least. The collection includes a fitted denim button-down, a black Old Navy criss-cross jersey, two shirt-under-sweater v-necks, and a stretchy dark red number that convinced me I was still hot at a critical moment.

I vividly remember the moment of decision I faced that red-shirt year. After having weathered six pregnancies, I was just about ready to forfeit any and all further attempts at hotness. Staring at my young-yet-not face in the mirror, I seriously considered chucking my cosmetic bag, cutting my hair in a short, sensible style, and buying some stretch pants and sneakers. Going unisex, I thought, would be a huge relief.

Then all of a sudden I realized I was only thirty-two. At some future date, hotness would be taken from me whether I liked it or not, so I might as well capitalize on my remaining years of choice. And so, instead of chopping my hair off, I went out and bought a highlighting kit. And instead of buying stretch pants I bought a deep red stretchy jersey top with a v-neck.

I’m wearing that shirt in my facebook profile photo. Notice the look of triumph.

But here’s the deal. I’m now thirty-eight, and counting. A combination of factors have made it difficult for me to properly enjoy that shirt, as well as the other members of the skinny collection. Age, for one: with every passing year it takes more and more effort to maintain my weight, and I’m just not willing to spend more than an hour a day exercising, and I’m just not willing to forfeit refined carbohydrates because they’re one of my chief joys in life. Medication, for another: when I switched antidepressants last spring I gained 20 lbs within 6 months. And check this out: recently I had my first-ever custom bra fitting, wherein I learned that my bra was three (3) sizes too small. Now that “the girls” are properly supported, there’s a lot less room in all of my shirts, and the skinny ones look downright scandalous.

Still, while I haven’t comfortably worn my skinny shirts for a good long while now, I haven’t wanted to let them go. A while back I gathered them up and moved them to the far end of the closet, not the hidden end, but the end I can easily see. There they hung, daily reminding me of an impossible ideal belonging to a bygone era. The sight wasn’t discouraging. Rather, it enabled me to live in a fluffy pink cloud of denial: “Someday soon I’ll wear those again.” In fact, I was so convinced that this would happen that I didn’t worry much about my actual body size or how I would get from here to there. In my mind, being skinny was a present-day reality.

But the other day, the pink cloud parted. Not dramatically or traumatically, which I’m grateful for. But gently and wisely. I just looked at those shirts and thought, “I’m not going to wear those again. Time to give them to someone who will.”

So, yesterday I brought the pile over to one of my close friends who I deeply care about despite the fact that she weighs 50 pounds less than me. I laid it on her kitchen counter without hesitation, and smiled as I thought about how cute she would look in the black-and-white sweater-shirt thing. I drove home in my supersized bra with my muffin top oozing over my denim waistband, and was warmly greeted by a man who, apparently, thinks middle-aged fleshiness is hot.

I’m inclined to agree.

p.s. I kept the red shirt. It might still work, with a jacket.

The un-post

January 20th, 2010 Musings

Yesterday I started writing a post about purging my closet of skinny shirts. Meaning, those shirts I never wear due to excessive flesh.

Problem was, once I started writing I felt compelled to turn the post into a polished personal essay. I have so much to say on the topic of body image, and so many anecdotes came to mind that linked together in a pleasant literary way, and I couldn’t stand the thought of just posting a few stream-of-consciousness thoughts but I didn’t have the time or energy or desire to do anything more.

So I didn’t post. I took a nap instead.

This morning I realized that if I can’t jettison my posting hang-ups, Queen Serene will die a quick and shameful death. Here’s the situation: I don’t want to write essays for my personal blog. I write them for other online forums, and I enjoy that immensely. But they’re a lot of work. I don’t want to work hard on my own blog. I want to vomit words onto the screen and then immediately flush (i.e., hit “publish”).

Thus far, this is an approach I’ve only used on my private blogs. Which most of you haven’t read, and for good reason. But I’d like to try a modified version here and now. While keeping the content appropriate for public consumption, I’d like to experiment with letting the delivery be spontaneous and messy.

Here’s my first triumph: I was about to end this post and start a new one because I’m about to start writing on a different topic. The tidy, logical left brain says this warrants a new post. But see, I’m not starting one. Baby steps, people.

So, this morning I put a third coat of paint on the family room ceiling. Yes, a third coat. It was a spotty coat, because all I did was walk around with the roller-on-a-stick (reminds me of hot-dog-on-a-stick) and swipe the spots that looked patchy. In retrospect, I probably should’ve just done the whole damn ceiling again, because the extra-coated spots are now going to make the rest of the ceiling look patchy by comparison.

Let me say a few words about this ceiling. First of all, it’s big. About 500 square feet. Second, before I pulled the roller out, it hadn’t been painted for well over a decade. Possibly two, or even three decades. Our house was built in 1978, and there’s a very good chance this was the original coat of paint. The reason why I suspect this is that the paint was no longer white; it was a muddy grayish-brown. Semi-gloss.

I don’t think I need to explain how satisfying it was/is to slap ultra bright flat white paint over that murky mess.

Some thoughts I had while doing so:

–Painting is like getting a shot. The anticipation is far worse than the actual doing. Whenever I finish a painting project I always think, “why did I wait so long to get that done?”

–Painting is actually the easy part of painting. Prepping the walls is what sucks.

–Painting ceilings really sucks, but painting bathrooms is worse.

Oh man, I’m so tempted to go back and erase these sentences and write a cohesive, thoughtful paragraph instead. I WILL NOT.

–This ceiling was a (expletive) to paint because it is so big and so far away from my center of gravity, but it was also relatively fun to paint because I didn’t have to use any masking tape (because I’m painting the walls next) and I didn’t have to protect the floor (because the rug will soon be gone) and I didn’t have to move any furniture (because we recently trashed almost all the furniture in the room).

–I’ve given up on good timing for projects like this. The only way any home improvement gets done around here is if I do it in spite of the number of kids around, the other demands on the day, etc. I hauled the huge bucket of ceiling paint right into the middle of a teeming mass of my posterity lounging in front of the x-box in honor of MLK day, and got to work.

–While I wonder why I didn’t paint that disgusting ceiling sooner (I’ve hated it ever since we moved in 8.5 years ago) I recognize that this week was the right time. This made me think about all the other improvements that need to be made in my house. I get overwhelmed when I consider them all. I get angry that I don’t have a large pile of money to spend immediately so I can get them all done. It’s really hard to do just one little bit at a time. And there are projects that I can’t imagine ever getting done. (Warning: deep thought coming!) It’s the same way with my life. I want to clean and fix everything that’s wrong with me, all at once. And I can’t. And while I might spend ten years thinking “I really need to get that particular problem taken care of,” the right time will eventually come and I’ll see myself doing it and think, “Wow, check it out! I’m actually taking care of this disgusting muddy ceiling! Finally!”

Yes, that’s the point I wanted to get to: at some point I will finally conquer all my demons. But don’t hold your breath.

Skinny shirt post tomorrow, maybe.

Deliberate Surrender

January 18th, 2009 Musings

There’s a woman in my neighborhood named Joanne. She’s probably sixty-ish, but her smooth, rosy cheeks make her look much younger. Although stalwart in the gospel she rarely comes to church these days because of the effects of severe Type 1 diabetes. But once in a while I see her shuffling a slow course around our cul-de-sac, getting the exercise she needs to help the circulation in her swollen, pain-wracked legs. It takes her about fifteen minutes to complete the circle.

One morning I was outside with my preschoolers when she made her way past our yard, leaning on her husband for support. I told her I missed seeing her at church, and asked her how she was. She responded with one of her typical upbeat replies (the woman has the most positive attitude I’ve ever encountered). But then she paused for a moment. “You know,” she said, “this isn’t how I envisioned spending the rest of my life.”

I almost started to cry right there. Her words were so candid and poignant, so void of self-pity. And so evocative of the human condition. How many of us get exactly what we expect? How many of us come within spitting distance? How many of us find ourselves in a territory so foreign from what we envisioned, we sometimes wonder what force carried us hither and set us down to live, completely surprised, sometimes traumatized, and usually at least a little bit bewildered?

Joanne’s words made me think about the unexpected course of my own life. As is the case for all of us, the surprises have come through a mix of choice and circumstance. When I got married, I never thought I’d end up with seven children–but an unexpected, near-constant desire for children gripped me for a dozen years, and I chose to follow it, and mother nature cooperated, so here I am in a household of nine. When I was a child old enough to be self-aware, I never expected to live a life complicated by chronic depression, but I do (and so do two of my children). When I was a young adult and envisioned my future offspring, I didn’t see a child with Down syndrome. There have been dozens of surprises, large and small, positive and negative and neutral. And no matter how often I counsel myself to expect the unexpected, it always takes me off-guard. I can’t trump the unpredictable and the unseen, although I’ve tried.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the surprises of life. About how to cope with the stark reality of the unexpected. I wonder how I can plan for life, knowing it very well may shred my plans–and that I might be better off as a result. I wonder how to walk the fine line between deliberate living and surrender.

Maybe deliberate surrender is an important part of the answer.

Nothing quite like

January 16th, 2009 Mothering, Musings

Wednesday was Elizabeth’s dance recital, the “Winter Showcase” featuring the various dance classes at the high school. Twelve performances on the program. Elizabeth’s was scheduled about a third of the way through. When the number started I leaned forward in my seat, eyes scanning the stream of dancers running onstage. Faces and bodies and faces and bodies and faces and–there! There she is, Reed and I exclaimed simultaneously, like the cheesy parents we are. There’s nothing quite like picking your child out of a crowd.

As the music pumped out of the PA I flashed back to the only other dance recital Elizabeth has been part of: the performance of the “Super Star Strutters” at the Independence Day parade in Spanish Fork. She was four years old then, dressed in a hot pink t-shirt and denim shorts, jumping and wiggling in time with the Beach Boys. Now she was clad in a skin-tight brilliant turquoise camisole and black leggings, limbs moving in sharp yet graceful precision to a pumping hip-hop rhythm.  When she turned I studied her back and shoulders, fair skin and tight muscle defined in light and shadow.  There’s nothing quite like realizing your preschooler has (really and truly) become a woman.

The dancers were an intriguing bunch. Some moved with near-painful hesitation, as if they weren’t sure their arms and legs would obey neural commands. Some were languid, like bored teenagers at Grandma’s Sunday dinner. Some danced as if they really meant it. Elizabeth was one of them. I watched her in fascination, being someone who’s never been fully at ease in her own skin–not in public, at least. Certainly not on stage.

As I absorbed the contrast between the fluid dancers and the stiff ones, I remembered something wise my friend Darlene once told me: All you’ll have at the end of your life, all you’ll take with you, is eighty-something years of being Kathy Soper. That took me by surprise. I don’t know why, but it did. I guess I’ve spent so much time and effort trying to change myself that I’ve rarely relaxed and just enjoyed being myself.

Applauding loudly at the end of the number, I reminded myself that I want to live the way Elizabeth dances. From what I’ve seen, there’s nothing quite like it.

Frozen

January 21st, 2008 Musings

It’s snowing here today. I woke up to six inches of white covering the landscape, softening its angles, blurring its lines. More snow is falling, down and sideways, blown by frigid air.

Today, we’re staying in. It’s a holiday, and my husband and kids are home. Seven of the nine of us are sick. We’ll drink Lemon Zinger herbal tea and eat saltines. We’ll sip ginger ale and eat Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. We’ll watch movies, curled up on the couches with our blankets, and be glad we’re not out in the cold. Maybe if we weren’t sick we’d pull on our gloves and hats and boots and build a family of snowmen in our backyard. There’s enough snow to make nine, one for each of us, a frozen version of our family. Or maybe we’d grab our snow saucers and head for the park with the big hill, where dozens of kids are probably gathered right now, bright-colored caps making streaks of color as they fly down the slope, gasping and laughing. Before we did that, though, we’d put on our suits and dresses and heavy coats and head for church, van wheels sliding on the ice, for the funeral.

Harrison was nineteen, maybe twenty. Very handsome. Quick, strong, vibrant–until leukemia sapped life from the very marrow of his bones. They gave him new marrow, liquid hope. But it was not enough.

My kids prayed for him, fasted for him. They didn’t really know him, but they knew his mother, and they knew cancer was something serious enough to go hungry for. Saturday night, right after family prayer, I told them he had died. I didn’t want to. They were already weak, feverish, vulnerable. But they needed to know.

“I prayed for him,” Christine said. “I thought he would get better.”

It was a risk, involving my kids in Harrison’s illness. From the start I wondered how it would end, and what I would say if it ended in death. And there are things to say to Christine–that her prayers were pure, and loving, and good. That her prayers helped comfort him.

There are things to say to Harrison’s parents, too. That their son was pure, and loving, and good. That we will do all we can to comfort them. Hundreds of people are gathering, even as I type, even as the pan of potato casserole for the wake browns in my oven, to comfort them.

Even so, they must stand in the frigid air today, and commit their son’s cold body to the earth. Nobody can save them from that. And afterward, all the people surrounding them will join them for a meal, breaking bread together in shared loss, and then get in their cars and go home, to their own lives. They’ll sit on the couch and turn on the TV, curled up in a blanket. Or they’ll pull out their sleds and snowballing gloves. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It will not do Harrison any good for his neighbors to live less.

But his parents will live less, for a time. And they will live differently, for the rest of their days.

It’s snowing here today.

ER

August 4th, 2005 Musings

For me, having heart palpitations during pregnancy is normal. But having heart pain is not. The OB nurse recommended that I go to the ER to get my oxygen levels checked, and get an EKG.

Knowing how things can go in the ER, I figured it would take a couple of hours to get my tests done. No problem. Kids were home with Grandma (good timing on that visit, Mom).

At first I enjoyed (?) the full attention of the staff. Chest pain + obvious pregnancy = brisk concern. Half reclined on my narrow “bed,” I had three people working on me at once–one inserted an IV and drew blood, one stuck approximately three dozen sticky lead attachments all over my body (yes, several of them looked like stri-dex pads), one peppered me with questions (Who’s here with me today? Nobody. Was I short of breath? was I nauseated? Of course, I’m pregnant). Thankfully the EKG was normal. The air of crisis departed, along with the nurses. And the waiting began.

It went something like this: nurse announces that attending physician would be in shortly. Wait 40 minutes. Attending physician comes in for five minutes, announces that nurse would be in to do x,y, or z. Wait forty minutes. Repeat.

I was fine for a while. I read my two People magazines, and tried not to think about my aching IV arm (the needle was at an odd angle), my filling bladder, and my rumbling stomach. But after a couple of hours I began to wilt. I couldn’t get off the bed because of the tangle of leads. There was no call button, so if I wanted to get someone’s attention I had wait, or call out into the hall when I saw shoes passing by beneath the door curtain. Normally I don’t mind being alone; in fact, I count it a singular treat. But there was something about the surroundings, the occasion, the multiple discomforts, that resulted in acute loneliness. I felt like I had entered some alternate reality–that the entire universe consisted of my little ER cubby. I got weak and dizzy from hunger (couldn’t eat until they knew I wouldn’t be having surgery). During the fourth hour, I actually cried.

At the start of the sixth hour, after analyzing the monitor readouts, the lab results, and the chest CT scan, they couldn’t find anything wrong with me. Of course I was grateful. After I ripped off all the adhesive pads and some of my skin, I was also grateful to perch on the edge of my bed and eat my hospital dinner. I even turned on the TV, which I could finally reach, as I shoveled in my cheeseburger.
CNN was showing footage of starvation in Niger.

Later that night as I tried to settle into sleep on my comfy bed at home, I felt something sharp and scratchy poking a tender spot on my side. It was one of the square lead attachments I had overlooked. I ripped it off and tried to rub away the remaining adhesive. But I could use one on my soul somewhere, a nagging, poking token to remind me how little I know of hunger, pain, and loneliness.