“You look just like your mother.”
It made me smilethrough gritted teeth.
It’s true that she and I share the same blue eyes, the same genial Midwestern countenance.
We even have the same unruly swirl of hair at the nape of the neck.
My mother has been overweight for as long as I can remember, not obese but a matronly plump.
I’ve always taken a certain comfort in having a mom who is not thin.
My mother and I didn’t share clothes, but we did share food.
Some nights, though,my mother ate alone.
She’d break it into pieces and chew quietly until it was gone.
I could sense even then that my mother was unhappy, and I believed it was my fault.
I’d heard her words to me: It’s so hard to be thin after having kids.
Clearly, if she hadn’t given birth to my sister and me, she wouldn’t be overweight.
She would still be that beautiful, joyful bride.
I gained and lost 20 pounds at college, 40 at law school, 60 at my first job.
When I maintained that weight into my 40s, I thought I’d won the battle.
Whenever I managed to lose weight, my mother said she was happy for me.
Until one day, I had.
I was too busy to go to the gym and then, after a while, too depressed.
I went straight for the brownies, cookies oron a really bad daya Cadbury Dairy Milk bar.
The last thing I expected was for her to show up 30 pounds lighter.
At lunch that first day, she pushed away half her sandwich.
“I’m full,” she said.
I mentioned that I’d made chocolate cake.
“I don’t have a taste for sweets anymore,” she said casually.
Who was this woman, I couldn’t help thinking, and what had she done with my mother?
It turned out that a Curves gym had opened down the block from her work.
Her insurance paid the fee and provided free sessions with a nutritionist.
She could drop in first thing in the morning, exercise and catch up on local gossip.
“Good for you!”
is what I said, because itwasgood for her, wasn’t it?
This development was wonderful.
So why was I feeling the teensiest bit cranky?
But it was more than that.
What do you do at the end of a tough day?
Bickering children stressing you out?
Which happened to be my mother’s current size.
Only she was jubilant about that numbershe hadn’t been so small in decades.
My new, healthy, energized,size 14 mother set about fixing my life.
She cleaned my kitchen.
She folded my laundry.
It was, I realized, a way I could eat again.
With my mom around to help, I was able to stop my binges.
So I took a break.
No Cadbury bar the first night of her visit.
Meanwhile, I watched her play contentedly with my son.
At the time, he was very into deciding how much things cost.
He himself cost $6, he announced.
I cost $8.
How much did Grandma cost?
“One million dollars!”
My mother sat back and laughed.
I saw then that she wasn’t merely smaller.
She seemed happier, too, more at home in her skin.
Perhaps we did not need food to bring us together, nor to make us happy.
After all, thinness isn’t the same thing as happiness and solace isn’t the same as food.
Photo Credit: Terry Doyle
