There is something to be said for Mom’s home cooking, even if your mom isn’t the world’s best cook. Now I’m not saying my mom isn’t a good cook, but she does have an aversion to spices, and as far as I know, butter has never seen the inside of her kitchen. Be that as it may, there are some family dinners that I recall from my childhood with a certain amount of nostalgia.
1. Shabbat dinner. This is the traditional Friday night sabbath meal that Jews the world over share. At our house it usually consisted of a piece of pan fried halibut (coated in Italian style breadcrumbs) served with carrot sticks and a baked potato. The potato was always topped with chip dip (sour cream and onion, of course). It was a long time before I realized that putting chip dip on a baked potato was considered weird by the rest of the world. It’s delicious.
2. Baked chicken breast. My mother would sprinkle Lawry’s Seasoned Salt all over chicken breasts, then bake them. Since this was the only time anything with any type of seasoning was ever served, it seemed like a real treat.
3. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes. My mom made fantastic mashed potatoes, even if they were made with margarine. The meatloaf was pretty good too, when my mother stuck to the tried and true method. The various experiments with green peppers, oats, and Campbell’s alphabet soup weren’t as well received.
4. Dry, grey-brown roast beef. ‘Nuf said.
5. Dry, grey-brown steak. See number 4.
6. Hamburgers. These were small and pretty tasty. They were generally pan fried. They weren’t as grey as the other beef dishes.
7. Spaghetti with meatballs. No complaints here, it was quite tasty.
8. Liver and onions. My father loved it. My brother and I ate something else, probably cereal. Fortunately my mom didn’t make it often. I don’t think she liked it either.
What did your family eat when you were growing up?
When I was a young student teacher part of my training required me to videotape and critique one of my lessons. Apart from the complex logistics of borrowing the appropriate equipment (no cell phones in those days), I regard this exercise as one of the most irritating, yet ultimately helpful experiences in my training. Still, I hated it.
You see, I was fat. I’ve been fat to greater or lesser degrees since roughly puberty. In seventh grade home economics class the teacher measured each of us so that we would use the correct size pattern for garment construction. It was all very sensible, and not done to make anyone feel embarrassed or awkward, but c’mon, we were in seventh grade!
My waist measurement was a full three inches greater than most of the other girls. Well, two and a half, but it felt like three. It was, gasp, twenty-nine and a half inches. Most of the girls were in the twenty-five to twenty-seven inch range. In retrospect most of them hadn’t hit puberty yet, either, but my twelve-year-old brain didn’t take that into consideration. It also didn’t take the fact that I was taller than most of them into account either. I just felt big and fat. I wish the me today could have talked to the twelve-year-old me.
The me now might not have as many weight issues if that were the case. I could comfort that little girl and explain to her that everyone develops at their own pace, and try to convince her that she was just fine. Maybe I could ease her worries just a bit. Then I would encourage her to keep riding her bike and swimming and playing basketball and volleyball and soccer, even if she wasn’t the best. Maybe she would have developed the confidence to stay active instead of shrinking toward the sidelines.
Unfortunately, my mother was of no help at all. I’m adopted and by the time I was twelve I was way bigger than my mom ever would be. I towered over her, and outweighed her by a considerable margin. She’s barely over 5 feet tall and was under 100 pounds when she married. She didn’t have a clue what it was like to feel big and awkward. In fact she didn’t have much of a clue about puberty at all. I had to ask for a training bra at age 10. Talk about humiliating. I tried hinting, but it didn’t work. Unlike other little girls of 10, I really needed one.
Going through junior high and high school I was always on the bigger side, but not so big that I couldn’t shop in the regular stores. That would come later. I always loved to eat, and as I got older much of my social life involved going out for food. I grew up in the cold Northeast, and that’s what people do for 9 months of the year or so. Then the weather gets better and we have picnics and barbeques all summer. Oh, and we drink. Hey, it’s cold outside!
Sure enough the freshman 15 found me, along with a little extra. Then I graduated, got a job, moved in with my boyfriend, and really got comfortable. Stretchy pants became my friends, and the extra pounds didn’t seem to matter so much. Big sweaters were in style and life was good.
Then came graduate school and student teaching. I needed clothes. Real clothes. Suits. Nothing fit. I had to move up to the plus size department. It was humiliating, especially since my tiny mother was the one taking me shopping for my professional wardrobe. She’s never been easy to shop with. It was awful, but I did come away with some really lovely pieces. Thank you Liz Claiborne and Jones of New York for making beautiful clothing for plus size women, even way back then when everyone else was putting all the fat women in pastel polyester.
Off I went to my student teaching gig, doing quite a good job of it, thank you very much. Then came the videotape assignment. Ugh. I did NOT want to do it. Of course I had seen myself in the mirror, millions of times. But pictures somehow were different, they made me look bigger than I thought I was. They still do. And video? Well that’s a hundred times worse. Now not only will I see all sides of me, but I’ll have to listen to the silly things I say, and watch the awkward way I move. No thanks. I wasn’t looking at it from the standpoint of how it could help me assess my teaching practice at all. I was too wrapped up in my own self concept of my physical attributes to move into the realm of what the assignment could do for me. I was fixated on what it would do TO me. Stupid girl.
Still, it was required, so I sucked it up and did it. I soon forgot the camera and just taught the lesson. Afterwards I avoided watching the video for a couple of days, but I had to watch it to critique it, and the assignment was coming due. I couldn’t put it off forever. I put the tape in, prepared for the worst. The first minute I spent cringing as I went through a mental checklist. Hair? Not bad. I like those earrings. My voice is loud enough, but not too loud. That jacket really does look nice with that skirt, but ugh, I walk like a linebacker.
Soon I ran out of things to fixate on, so I began to actually pay attention to the teaching. Hey, that was a good point I made. Uh oh, I rushed through that part of the directions, no wonder the students got confused when they got to that part of the assignment. Oh no, I never saw her raised hand as I was teaching. Hey, those two have been passing notes! I didn’t see that during the lesson. Great job having all the materials in place before hand, distributing everything went very quickly and smoothly. And so on. Once I stopped worrying about the silly stuff like my hair and my weight, I could focus on the important stuff, like how to best reach my students and where to hone my skills. It was an eye opening experience, one that my professor included for a very good reason.
I still don’t love seeing myself on video, but I no longer cringe at the thought. I am valuable. I have a place in this world. Ok, maybe I take up a little more space than most people, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be in the picture. I contribute to my family, to my workplace, and to my students lives. I have a voice and I use it. If it occasionally ends up in video, so be it. Maybe I will reach someone who needs to hear my message, or even just see me being happy with who I am. After all, isn’t that our ultimate goal? To live in a way that makes us happy and satisfied with who we are and what we have to offer the world? I think it is.
Blog stats are a funny thing. They can give a blogger a sense of what people are interested in reading, and they can practically make a blogger (ok, me) giddy when they spike. I want to be read! I also get a kick out of checking out the map. I enjoy it when people from far-flung places visit, even if I suspect the majority of them aren’t actually reading the content.
That being said, I still have to write content that’s worth reading. My dear readers, I know I’ve been missing that mark more times than hitting it lately. What can I say, other than, I’m sorry? I promise to try harder.
Still, you continue to hang with me, and some of you are even getting out your tool belts and rolling up your sleeves to dig around BulgingButtons to unearth some oldies but goodies. I think it’s often the catchy titles that attract readers to start with. Some of the posts with the most hits have odd titles, like “Goodbye Zebra Mules,” and “The Devil, Karma, and Frito Pie.” Hopefully, though, you enjoy more than just the title.
Hopefully you enjoy reading about my daily ups and downs, and the perils of being a fat girl in a skinny (or desperately trying to be skinny) world. Today’s fat girl problem: the shelf. You know, that place along the boob line where dropped food always seems to hit before careening off into the unknown (or just settling there).
As I write, I am wearing yet another shirt with a stain along the shelf. Why? Because salad dressing stains. Yes, I got it on myself while I was at lunch with my friend. The food never goes straight down when it falls off the fork (and why exactly does it fall off the fork in the first place? I don’t know). It invariably hits the shelf and leaves a tell-tale mark, which, 90% of the time leaves a stain.
This is why fat women wear prints. The stains are far less noticeable on a print than they are on a field of solid lavender (like the shirt I have most recently stained). This is also why this fat girl hates to spend much on shirts or dresses. About 1 in 5 never make it past the first wearing. 20% people! This is a distressingly high statistic. It’s alarming, really.
What can be done? I don’t know. A better fork? Less messy food? IV fluids only? It seems like there are some options out there. This problem needs a solution, and it needs it fast, because I’m running out of clothes, and I really don’t want to go shopping.
At our house it usually consisted of a piece of pan fried halibut (coated in Italian style breadcrumbs) served with carrot sticks and a baked potato. The potato was always topped with chip dip (sour cream and onion, of course). It was a long time before I realized that putting chip dip on a baked potato was considered weird by the rest of the world. It’s delicious.
2. Baked chicken breast. My mother would sprinkle Lawry’s Seasoned Salt all over chicken breasts, then bake them. Since this was the only time anything with any type of seasoning was ever served, it seemed like a real treat.
BulgingButtons 