Months ago, the then 5 year old saw a boy wearing sneakers with wheels in the grocery store. I want some, she said. Not a surprising ask as she’s 5 and wants everything. Maybe for your birthday, I said. And even though I’m in this space where I think we have so much stuff, too much stuff, it’s still her birthday so I bought her a pair of shoes with wheels. Which I promptly sent back when I discovered they were defective. After looking around some more I decided the reviews for the sneakers were just sketchy enough to make me nervous and I opted for buying a regular pair of skates.
And then, because the 52 year old brain is also sometimes sketchy, I had the bright idea of buying a pair for myself. Mind you, that last time I remember being on skates I think I was about 10 or 11. But I had this thought, “I used to be good on them. I’ll remember how to use them.”
The day they came in I put them on and as it turns out, there doesn’t seem to be even a whiff of muscle memory. Which also isn’t surprising since, as I mentioned, I’m 52. Between 10 and 52 there’s been a whole lot of forgetting going on.
I checked this morning and I have until Friday to decide if I want to return them. My stubborn streak is saying to keep them and that I just need to put a little time into practicing. My fear of breaking something for the first time in my life is saying, “Stop it. Just return the things; the kid will have just as much fun learning to skate on her own as she would if you were next to her stumbling around.”
Right now the argument is pretty evenly tied. I truly don’t know where I’m going to land - on the returning the skates I mean. I’m pretty sure if I keep them I’m gonna land on my ass at least half a dozen times.
That’s a lie. Obviously. Because here I am, writing about weight.
But, in general, I don’t talk about my weight. The reason for the silence, however, has changed over the years.
I grew up hearing that I was a fat child. The topic of my weight, my changing body, was a point of discussion for much of my childhood and early adolescence. Take a moment to consider how much fun that was. If you decided that was no fun at all, then, you win. Here’s a kudos to you. “When she hits puberty she’ll slim down.” “When she starts putting an interest in boys, she’ll slim down.” “She’d better lose some weight or she won’t find a man to marry her.” You get the gist.
Here’s the thing though. The picture that was put into my head was that I was a contender for fattest baby/toddler/little girl in the world. Or if not the whole world, El Salvador at least. I went from cute fat, a sign that we clearly weren’t doing too bad if the family had this fat baby/child to being a sense of embarrassment because I wasn’t thin like the other girls.
About a decade or so ago, I found a rare photo of me when I was in my early teens and was I a stick? No. I was a little chubby but not as big as I had been led to believe.
The damage, by the time I was in my mid-teens, was done. I was fat. I was always going to be fat. And nobody would ever love me. That was my lot in life. I was so embarrassed by it all that I refused to say the word fat, I never answered any of the questions posed to me, wondering when I was going to stop being lazy, eating so much, etc etc etc. I figured if I ignored it, it would all just go away. My favorite colors, if you asked me, where black and browns. Adding color meant possibly wearing navy or to be wild, light grey. This was also the mid to late 80s so it’s not as if there were a lot of options for someone not able to fit in straight sized clothes. So even if I had wanted to be a plus sized fashionista, I didn’t have the resources or stores to pull that off.
Let’s fast forward a few decades, shall we? Because you get the gist. Fat equaled ugly, unlovable, undeserving. Despite seeing evidence to the contrary out in the world, that was the narrative that played non-stop in my head.
It has taken literal decades to undo that damage. And to be perfectly honest with you, all of that damage isn’t completely undone.
At 52, I am at place, though, were I can say out loud, I am a fat woman. It’s as neutral now as me also saying, I am a short woman. I am a smart woman. Okay, I don’t say that. My usual go to is “I’m a reasonably smart person.” Because, cliched as it may be, I’m also a funny person. Fat and funny, that two Fs that always go together, no?
I’m okay with my body. Would I like it to be stronger? Sure. I’m now at a size (even if it’s still considered plus sized) where I have more clothing options available to me. Would I like to be a bit smaller just to have even more options? Yes. I no longer try to hide in dark colors. I even, gasp. wear horizontal stripes despite the “fact” (?) that they make you look larger. At one point I thought, I’m a big woman. Vertical stripes aren’t going to magically make a hundred pounds disappear.
I’m glad I’m in this head space now because I have a little girl to raise. And the image I want in her head is that she is strong and capable and that her body is meant to move and take her as far as she wants to go. The world being what it still is, will make her doubt herself. I’m hoping to give her a solid enough foundation where she can take those doubts and shove them aside to reach whatever goals she sets for herself.
And so, I don’t talk about weight. Not because I’m ashamed or embarrassed. No, I don’t talk about weight now because it doesn’t define me. It may be the first thing people notice about me. I can’t do anything about that. But it doesn’t have to be the barometer for how I value myself. I wouldn’t want a number on a scale to determine how my daughter feels about herself so why shouldn’t I want that for myself as well?
I’ve thought of myself as a details oriented person for as long as I can remember. Whenever they ask you about your strengths at work I nearly always say some version of, I can mind the details. It’s certainly something that I believe has helped me get where I am today.
Putting together this orchid from the Lego Botanical Collection has certainly tested my attention to detail. Mind you, it’s not as if I’ve ever claimed to be some organizational savant but I had more trouble than I would have expected following these directions. I suppose I should cut myself some slack since this is only the second Lego set I’ve ever completed but, still, it was humbling.
I’m not sure that assembling Lego sets is going to be a new hobby; as hobbies go, it’s an expensive one. I do like the Botanicals though. They’re certainly easier to care for than real plants - another hobby that I’m trying to pick up with varying degrees of success.
I do like the way this little corner of my office is looking - I have another set to do but I’m taking a bit of a break because, while I like the result, I don’t find the act of assembling the sets to be all that relaxing. And isn’t that the point of hobbies? To help you relax? Forget about stressors for a short while at least? The act of putting this together was at times confusing and frustrating. In the end, I had to Google what to do with the small pile of brown bricks because the picture in the instruction booklet was so unhelpful. So we’ll see how I’m feeling after I put the other set of flowers together. I am sort of interested in doing the LOVE set so Lego building is probably still in my future.
Took a road I rarely use this afternoon and it reminded me of something.
At the end of junior year the French 4 AP teacher asked me if I was going to take French 5. I told her I wasn’t because I was a little burnt out on French. She encouraged me to continue on to French 5 AP lit and promised she’d make it fun. I really liked her so I said okay.
Cut to a month or so later when I get my schedule and her name is nowhere on it. I called - I think? Somehow I got in touch with a classmate to ask if she knew what the hell was going on. She tells me the teacher has retired. How do you know, I ask. She lives in the house behind me and she mentioned it in passing.
Tell me why I had the nerve to knock on this lady’s door to ask how she could retire when she’d convinced me to continue with a subject I was so done with?!?
She explained she’d thought it over and decided it was time to retire and spend more time with her partner. Points to her for even entertaining my questions. In the moment I acknowledged that someone who’d been teaching for so long should get to retire whenever they pleased.
That goodwill evaporated quickly once classes started. The teacher who was assigned to cover the class had to take a crash course over the summer on French 5 AP lit and it was obvious. At the end of the first quarter a group of us met with the principal to complain that we weren’t actually learning the material that would prepare us for the AP exam. He thanked us for the feedback and said he’d take it under consideration for the following year.
By mid-year half the class had transferred out. A few kids who couldn’t transfer were allowed to treat that period as study hall. Because of my other classes I couldn’t switch out so I had to stay for the entire year. On some level I felt bad for her because it couldn’t have been easy or felt good to have a bunch of 17 year olds bitching about you. But given that I hadn’t really wanted to be in the class to begin with and the class felt like such a waste of time I’m sure I was a pill to interact with. It didn’t help that she accused me of stealing the French dictionary I used every day. Even when I explained that I had bought it from the school when they got newer editions she wanted to take it from me. I told her there was no way I was giving her a book I’d paid for.
Yes, I still have the dictionary. I paid for it after all.
Also, whenever someone tells me I’m a lot and I want to deny it i need to remember this story. 😂😂
After a couple of years of easily surpassing my reading goal of 40 books a year I decided I’d increase the number to 50. That level of arrogance was not not to be tolerated by the universe, it seems, as I barely got to 40. Ah well. I got hyper fixated on rereading or completing several series so the bulk fo the books read were thrillers. Not terribly educational but engaging enough to keep my interest and seeing as how I don’t believe books have to always be teaching me something, I’m okay with the choices. That said, I do think I’d like 2025 to not be so heavy on the forgettable reads.
The last week of 2024 I made a concerted effort to catalogue my books and I’m happy to say I got about 95% there. This is relevant here because one of last year’s goals was to also read physical books. I failed at this miserably with, I believe, only one of my reads being something I had on my shelves. Not that my books are catalogued, and in a bit of order, I’m a bit more motivated to select something from my shelves. (The cataloguing process will be a separate entry at some point soon.)
If you’ve been keeping up with my (albeit) sporadic updates I’m sure you can guess that my third and final goal will be to finish The Brothers Karamazov. Would I be me if I didn’t include my white whale in a reading goal entry? If I ever do finish it, I don’t know what I will do with myself.
What was your favorite read of the year?
Here are the books I read in 2024. Favorites of the year are marked by **s.
L is for Lawless, Sue Grafton
The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood’s Kings of Carnage, Nick de Selyen
The Surgeon (Rizzoli & Isles), Tess Gerritsen
The Apprentice (Rizzoli & Isles), Tess Gerritsen
The Sinner (Rizzoli & Isles), Tess Gerritsen
Body Double (Rizzoli & Isles), Tess Gerritsin
Vanish (Rizzoli & Isles), Tess Gerritsen
Erasure, Percival Everett
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, Jesse Q Sutanto
Blank, Zibby Owens
One for the Money (Stephanie Plum #1), Janet Evanovich
The Mephisto Club (Rizzoli & Isles), Tess Gerritsen
The Never Game (Colter Shaw), Jeffrey Deaver
The Keepsake (Rizzoli & Isles), Tess Gerritsen
The Goodbye Man (Colter Shaw), Jeffrey Deaver
Resurrection Walk (Lincoln Lawyer), Michael Connelly
After That Night (Will Trent), Karin Slaughter
Righteous Prey (Lucas Davenport & Virgil Flowers), John Sandford
Judgment Prey (Lucan Davenport & Virgil Flowers), John Sandford
Escape Clause (Virgil Flowers), John Sandford
Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers), John Sandford
The Final Twist (Colter Shaw), Jeffrey Deaver
Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers), John Sandford
Hunting Time (Colter Shaw), Jeffrey Deaver
The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme), Jeffrey Deaver
Good Material, Dolly Alderton
Ice Cold (Rizzoli & Isles), Tess Gerritsen
Toxic Prey, John Sandford,
The Watchmaker’s Hand (Lincoln Rhyme), Jeffrey Deaver
