When I was seven, I was skinny. Not too skinny, just that grow and go skinny that little kids get. Herne has it now. Pot-belly gone, finally, he’s super thin, about to put more on so he can find the hidden, “Lindquist/Liedel,” tall Gene that only Gene’s cousin Ben has.
My dad pulled me into his room and told me I looked sick, I was so thin. That would be the last time I heard that. I pudged up. Not alarmingly so, but I was 5′2″ and 113. Fat for the late sixties, early seventies.
Now the talks went the other way. “Boys don’t make passes at girl’s with fat asses.”
My mother, deeply concerned, took me to the doctor who put a twelve year old kid on a thousand calorie a day diet. I starved. So hungry all the time. No room for moderation, no cheating and no exercise. We didn’t know then that my metabolism would see this as an assault to my body and make my body hoard food. I’ve fought my metabolism since. I don’t blame mom.
Before mom married dad, she was Stewardess. Not a Flight Attendant. This was back in the fifties. You tolerated snapped bras and girdles and passes. It was part of your job. You also needed to be tiny. Mom and I were the same height. I’m a size 0 now. Her uniform is still way to small for me. I think she was 98 pounds and bragged about it. Too Skinny is not new.
Don’t get me wrong. I adored and still adore my mom. She would complain that I was her best friend and not an adult, but she was also tough on me. As tough on me as she was on herself.
Dad was just mean. I listen to him lecture me on my weight now and laugh. When I was this size in Junior High, I was fat. A lot of the appearance of being too thin now is the extra skin on my face. It droops and will, till I get it fixed, but I am working on my new career now and the money that would fix my face, has gone to that. I feel an urgency to make this happen and happen right. Well thought out, up front, etc.
I used to dream. My acne was terrible, my hair oily, fat and got horrible grades at 13. No one knew why. Well, I did, but never told anyone the babysitter was molesting me. Mom would die. He said so. I would fall asleep imagining my body becomng covered with a thick scab. Entering a hospital because no one knew why, or what to do. One day the scab fell off and I was thin, no stress. I understood math. I cared about myself and my education. I was pretty. My acne was gone. The scab fixed it. I’d emerged the daughter my parents wanted me to be. My sister saw me as always getting the attention, the praise. I’d lose couple of pounds and I was told I was wonderful. I soaked it in, because I never believed it. I needed to hear it.
Meanwhile, my sister was pretty, smart and kept her nose to the grindstone. Mom and Dad didn’t worry about her at all. She was always held up as the example to me.”Why can’t you be more like Susan?”
They’d forgotten something I never forget. Each child is different. I lived in terror of being taken back to the foster home and told that I was not good enough to keep. An honest reason to worry, that is not my story to tell. I was afraid of success, because I’d have to keep it up and then I would disappear and they would never praise me again. Failure meant love to me, because they talked to me. I was not nice talk, but talk.
Do I blame my parents for who I am today? No. I’m forty six and resentment over my childhood would be a waste of time. I am who I am today because of the bad and the good. No one has a perfect childhood. No one.
I am thinking about it though. My doctor gave me a prescription for my acne that has made my skin peel off a layer near my mouth. It reminded me of the magic scab, for the first time in years. A butterfly emerging. I thought I never emerged. I did. Not the way I dreamed of. Not tall, not gorgeous, not brilliant, not perfect and certainly not as smart as my sister, nor as brave. Just Nancy. You know what? I have a lot of warts, but I can live with that. I reached a lot of goals in my life, with many more to come.