I watch the young girls at the swimming pool. How they cover up their bodies with t-shirts and shorts. I don’t. I wear my swimsuit and am filled with discomfort the entire time. I watch us all walking around. Uncomfortable. Sticky. So worried.
I know how all this started. I was one of those young girls. I was awkwardly chubby. In my head i thought there was a pretty chubby and i didn’t even have that. I wasn’t even good enough for cute chubby.
And of course looking back now that is so ridiculous. I was perfect. Like all little girls. Little boys. Somewhere at a young age someone filled my brain with negative talk, put the idea in there that there were different bodies. That i was going to be fat. That i was fat. That everyone else was better than me. Perhaps it was peers, probably not.
I grew up in a fat hating family. I grew up chubby in a fat hating family. Make of that what you will. It took me years and becoming a parent to see the flaw in that thinking. It took having children who are a million ways of perfect to realize how wrong that was. It took being a mother to see the cruelty. I tell my kids every single day that they are beautiful and wonderful and to run around in their swim suits. To have fun and enjoy the gracefulness of their own bodies.
I read running magazines. I’ve never read hobby magazines before. Every issue has a supremely fit woman on the cover in a running bra and shorts. Looking fabulously fit. “I want to look like that.” “When i am a marathon runner i will look like that.” Not really. I’m still imposing that same old thinking on myself. It never really goes away. Does it? I am still not “Cute Runner.” I am a mother of four runner.
Same old thinking.
January 26, 2011
in music
When i walked in the kitchen this morning i was shocked to see my youngest son looking something like a teenager. All handsome and confidant. Sometimes seeing things in a different light changes everything.
On friday night i took the kids swimming. We went to a new pool and were surrounded by unfamiliar faces in an unfamiliar town. I was sitting in the hot tub watching the kids race up the stairs and zoom down the water slides. All knees and elbows and gleeful screams. Still all these years later i can’t believe how lucky i am. My little tribe. It’s in these moments where they play together, even if by necessity, these times when they get along and enjoy each others company. It’s in these moments that i wish to freeze time. That my mind could catch all of this forever in my heart. I could be bursting with love and pride for the rest of my days.
Toby and i spent a couple hours working on his homework yesterday. He falls behind in school because it takes him so much longer to read or write anything. I think he often just gives up, closes his book and moves on. I picture him there in his class, his throat swelling up with frustration and humiliation and it breaks me apart. He is so smart and clever and has the most amazing ideas, i hate his brain for making it so difficult for him to express himself. It hurts me to watch him struggle. To try my best to maintain a decent self-esteem for him while his education tries even harder to beat it out of him. I wake up at night wondering why almost every child in his grade got an “effort” award except him. The mountains of work he does at home combined with his perseverance make him the strongest little boy i know. He’s come so far. I hope he knows how proud i am of him.
My youngest daughter has an on again off again love affair with fairies. She builds beautiful houses for them out in the garden and leaves notes for them. I was so good at keeping up. At leaving little notes back or gifts. She has built two houses in the past six months. I neglected to reply to the notes sitting out there. She’d check some morning and say “i still didn’t get a note.” I have no excuse, because excuses are dumb. I simply kept forgetting when the day ended and they were all in bed. On saturday morning i went outside and saw that she had smashed up her house and the glass jar that had held a note for the past couple weeks. Those mistakes take the biggest piece of my heart.
Time just goes by and there is never enough of it. Never time to get it all right. Get it all done. Slow it down.