Dieting

I wrote these vignettes because I want to know why I have such an obsession with my own weight, which is, after all, just a number. I find this obsession pretty irrational considering that I don't judge people based on their weight and certainly don't feel very influenced by culture about weight. I think women can come in all shapes and sizes and all those sizes are beautiful. I have never wanted to look like the women in fashion magazines and I was never raised to care about weight. I also have never been a heavy person. So why do I have an unhealthy relationship with my weight? And why does a number mean so much to so many women?

First time I knew how much I weighed:

When I was 12, the summer before I got my period, I went to the Oregon coast with my family. We stayed in a really big, old beach house with my mom's family and all us girl cousins spent the week playing in the sand, swimming and gossiping through the night. All the girl cousins shared a bit attic room and we were all around the same age.

One day we were talking and one of my thinner cousins asked how much I weighed. I had never weighed myself, so we both weighed ourselves on the scale to compare: She weighed 95 lbs and I weighed 105. We were the same height and I remember being embarrassed that I weighed more and wishing that I too was 95 lbs.

First time I realized that others might notice my weight:

During junior high volleyball games, we had to wear short red shorts and long sleeve red and white tops. And during each game my face would turn red when I had to bump the ball because I couldn't put my arms completely together because of my large chest. And all I could think about was everyone looking at me and noticing how "chubby" I was.

There was this one very tall, very slender, very pretty blond girl, who with her impossibly skinny arms and flat chest was our star player. She was the forward, I was the setter. I was short, curvy and brunette. She was what I was not.

First time I was proud of my body:

After I trained and ran a half marathon when I was 25. I remember thinking that my body was absolutely amazing.

First time I was not embarrassed to wear a swimsuit:

I went to Hawaii with some girlfriends right after running my first half marathon. It was the first time I felt comfortable wearing a swimsuit. We spent the week walking around in bikinis and not being surprised at the attention we got. I held my head high and didn't think once about what I looked like. Because I looked good! :-)

First time I went on a diet:

The first time I went on a true diet was when I was 24. I don't count the million 1-2 day diets I've had before and since. I ate only 1200 calories a day. I didn't focus on eating healthy food, though a natural consequence of the calorie restriction was that I did eat healthy food because it was more filling. I lost 10 lbs and then another 10 after I started running.

First time my mother commented on my weight:

Never.

First time I really felt ugly:

One of my only male friends in high school and someone I thought was smart and mature drew a picture of me and gave it to me. It was really unflattering. When I first looked at it I thought it was a really funny joke. Like haha, you drew this horrible picture of a hag that so obviously isn't me and said it was me; what an awesome ironic, inside joke. But he didn't laugh "with" me as much as "at" me about the whole thing. And for a long time afterwards I was sure that was really how he saw me: as a hag. I kept that drawing for many years in a box. Which was WAY too many years and way too painful a lesson on how even when you're sophisticated and distant you can still get hurt.

First time I really felt pretty:

When I was a junior in college I went to my school's junior/senior banquet and wore a black velvet knee-length dress and Anne Klein strappy leather shoes. I did my own hair and liked my date. I don't recall him ever complimenting me but he was pretty nervous about his too-tight pants. But I knew that I was pretty.

First time I felt absolutely gorgeous:

First time I met my husband.

The Marathon

I did it. Yeah! The marathon is complete. The training is over. The race is done. The pain is now gone. The recovery run is completed. And now is the time for . . . What comes next?

I think this whole marathon training experience has been an interesting one for me. I was forced to train several times a week, sacrifice time with friends and husband, miss church on Sunday morning for several months because of training runs and endure all kind of weather. I ran when I was tired, ran when I was hungover, ran when I was sick, ran when it was rainy, ran when it was hot (the end of the Lacamas Lake Half was, to me, the worst race of my life) and ran . . . well, I ran basically all the freaking time.

I developed asthma or allergies, or some combination of both. Running lost all appeal. Running became boring. I hated running. Basically I got a little burnt out on running by the end.

But I did it. I ran and ran and ran and then my body started to seize up and my legs started to feel like lead weights and the Broadway bridge became the biggest hill of my life! and I kept going and I finished. I was delirious and cold and exhausted and I finished!

It was a great feeling and yet, and yet. The wonderful guilt began to take hold not long after (and not long before). I could have done better. I could have finished faster. I could have recovered quicker. I drank too much while training, I didn't eat enough veggies. While the hell didn't I lose those last 10 lbs?! Oh wait, there was that whole drinking wine and eating dessert instead of carrots thing.

Sigh. But in the end, training for the marathon taught me a LOT. I think there is something powerful in learning how to manage one's time and one's energies in a 26 mile stretch of time. I was forced to mentally and physically prepare for something incredibly taxing and psyche myself up for the biggest butt beating of my life!

I have a friend 25 lbs into a 120 lb weight lost and can't help but think of the similarities between the two.

Something I learned early on in my long runs is that you can't think about the big goal, the 12 miles or whatever, when you first start the run. You have to think about the first 3, when you start to find your rhythm, and then the next 3, when you reach the halfway point, and then the 3 after that, when you finding your pace in the hills, and finally the last 3 when you say, hell, I can run 3 more miles!

And I think weight loss, or any large goal, is like that. You just have to divide it up into little parts and as long as you've already established you can reach those little goals, then hell, you sure can reach the big goals.

And that is POWERFUL! To know your strength, to know your endurance, to know your body and be able to hear it and listen to it. And in spite of all the things I could have done (and of course plan to do in my next theoretical marathon, heh, heh), what I learned was some awesome stuff. And I just CANNOT hate my body for being chubby or whatever when it carried by cottage cheese ass 26.2 freaking miles.

Still lots of things to think about. But trying HARD to love myself for this and not critique what I could have done better.

Droopy Lids

Tired head. Sitting in an airport. Waiting for a flight. Tired head.
Phone is dead. Technology connects. Plane delayed. Head is dead.
Circuitry misconnected. Evening getting on. Feeling misdirected.
Tired head.
Terminal is full. Children hanging on the rail.
Person curled up. Blankets laid out.
Coffee wearing off.
Tired head.
Full day of work ahead. Buried by thoughts.
Fuzzy thoughts. Recollections of past days.
Tired head.
Wanting to board the effing plane.
To fly off to my namesake.
Make my way into the clouds
And not even look down.
But soar home along the way.
And end this effing day.
Tired head.

Happy Feet

Bruised knees
Bent back
Pounding Pulse
Brisk intake
High up the hill, the pace: pound, pound, pound

Round a bend
Then a dip, down, down, down
Stretched back
Sounds, brush, a flicka
Arms pumping the air

Ragweed, hung in the air
Mold on wet trees
Long grass
Splash, splash, mud on ankles
Deep breathes, breath, breath, breath

A grimace, a smile
Knees, ache
Feet, heels connecting to dirt
Pine needles, rocks, pebbles, gravel
Squish, Squish, Squish

I chortle in my narrow bed

"Narrow the bed, wide the world. "

It's odd to me how loneliness works a magic in my mind. When I'm alone, as I am for a week while my husband's away, my thoughts often turn to existential questions: Why am I here? Am I happy? My thoughts make a mental exercise of wondering where I'd be if I was single and if this now narrow bed of mine was the totality of my existence.

Someone, who never married (and who at 45 was heading off on another trip to India), once told me the above quote: "Narrow the bed, wide the world." The quote then, and now, got me thinking about marriage, and how, while it offers solace and extinguishs loneliness, does narrow one's world a bit. When you're single and your bed is narrow, you're pretty much free to go wherever you please, whenever you please.

To a certain extent, marriage narrows one's world. I don't spend as much time thinking about art, science, and meaning as I once did. Now I've traded those thoughts for worries about my bank account, when we should move out of the city, and if we should have children. When I was single I dreamed about trips to exotic locations, study in marvelous, oak paneled rooms, and my generation's metaphysical longings. Nowadays my life feels like a series of re-enacted episodes to a boring sitcom.

Currently one of our single friends is living with us and I find myself often thinking about singleness vs. marriedness. I know she'd like to be married and yet I also know she wouldn't be able to travel as much if she was. She recently spent 3 weeks in South America and, while theoretically this is a trip a married couple could take, it would be fiscally irresponsible for us to do something like that now.

Yet, I don't want to shortchange being married. In spite of a perceived lack of deep philosophically considerations, I would say I have grown deeply in touch with my emotions as a result of being married. As a single person I often struggled with how to define my feelings. I walked through life never asking "how do I feel right now." And now, being married, I am much more in tune with how I feel. I think that is a result of having somebody strong to hold me when I cry. Marriage, for me, allows me to feel a little more open to being weepy at life. For me, marriage's deep, rich intimacy makes it possible to dive into those deep, piercing hurts of life, and then allow love and trust to draw them out, weep with them and then shore them up.

In the end, there isn't a clear winner or loser. Being married is just different than being single. I suppose its all just part of the journey we take in life and the milestones we touch along the way: marriage for some, a child for others, perhaps its a heart pounding trip to Machu Picchu. We're not all destined to mark all the milestones along the way, sometimes our paths skirt certain signposts and at other times we deftly reach out and touch their well-worned surface.

The Wild

Trees. Pine. Needles beneath feet that walk a forest path. The rough outline of a line mowed down by atvs driven by cheap beer, a trail trailblazed by boy scouts. Children in the khaki uniforms of the post-war fifties walking a path now strewn with fern and fur. The smell of pine, the sound of rushing water. The rush of stream, cutting through the forest. The water making its way, regardless of impediment, for its destiny, the ocean. And the ocean WIDE and welcoming. Headwaters, then stream, then river, straining to be welcomed by the great water, the ocean. And the ocean, so gentle, pushing back, gently with the tide.

That is water; this is wild, the dank smell and the rushing noise. The same water that comes streaming from the tap and gently covers us in ours bath. The water we drink and in which we swim, gently paddling, weightless and surrounded.

The beauty of a place like the United States is that there are still places where you can drive an hour from a city and find yourself in this wooded place: a mile from an empty, abandoned campground, 5 miles up an empty dirt road, surrounded, engulfed in wildness. Sometimes I feel like this is the BEST part of living in America, this wildness.

I don't think about being in America much, which is probably really an American thing to think. In fact because of an unfortunate thing, most people think I'm not American to begin with. So I've grown up unattached to America (which is also probably really American). I'm not nationalistic or patriotic. I don't like America any better than other countries and to be truthful I have never felt very "American."

But when in I'm in the woods, in the wild, and I can still feel faintly the fog of a former people, tracking through this land as they hunted or the sound of wind in the trees with no people at all, that's when I think most of the idea of America. That love for the wild things; the love for adventure that drove people to embrace this wide, wild country. I know, out in the woods, that in my heart runs the blood of those people, who stretched out their hands to a new land, and then another, stretching, out of curiousity and fear, for the wild.

Lovers Lie: The plot of a story

There is a woman, who is 28. She is married, to a nice bloke in Seattle. They live together happy in a cute bungalow in Queen Anne. She works in PR, he works in Tech. They love each other and have a nice little life.

Then, one day, as she lay in bed drifting off to sleep she thinks about her life and how different it might have been if she'd decided to go to college in Massachusetts at Mount Holyoke instead of the Pacific NW. And she falls asleep.

When she awakes, she is in a bed in a room without windows. In the next room the window looks out onto a bare brick wall. In that room is a girl and the girl stares at her. And our protagonist, Lucy, well, she stares back.

Lucy says, "Hello. Where am I?"

Other girl says, "In our apartment? What the hell happened to you?"

The "other" girl, who's now been established as Caroline, proceeds to tell Lucy about Lucy's life in New York, as a PR exec (I think she should even work for the same global PR company to make it a real wink and nod), with a bastardly boyfriend.

Then Lucy is frantic and shoots about trying to determine where her brothers and mother and father are. Lo and behold her parents are still living in South Dakota, on a farm, in an isolated and rural area of prairie.

Lucy takes her expense-account, high-limit credit card and then proceeds to gallivant around the county seeing her parents, who never left their farm to move to California Lucy's sophomore year of high school as Lucy remembers . And her older brother in Fargo who now sells insurance (in her memories he's a surgeon in Santa Rosa, happily married and a father), is unmarried and childless and then to Minneapolis to see her younger brother who's married to a tart (the same tart who in Lucy's world he divorced after an ill conceived young marriage in college).

She then makes the hard trip to Seattle to find the man SHE knows as her husband. She ostentatiously drives to his mother's house on Whidby island and lies to her by saying that she was friends with this woman's son's best friend and that this woman's son lent her money and she needs his adress to pay him back. After fanagling with his mom, who is distrusting, she gets his address and then proceeds to try to woo her husband back. He now has a girlfriend, the same preening one who emailed him while (in her memories) Lucy was dating him.

She meets him. They connect, same passion, same love. They, in three words, fall in love. But the husband still has a girlfriend, so Lucy chats him up all night long (just like on the first date of Lucy's remembrance) and as they lay down on the bed next to each other, she asks him tearfully just to hold her, which he gentlemanly obliges. She falls asleep in his arms.

To wake up in his arms again, in her own bed and in the cute Queen Anne house of her remembrance.

(Pretty clever, eh?)