If Only

“Fatty, fatty, two-by-four, can’t get through the bathroom door!”

I was in second grade the first time I realized the size of my body differentiated me from my siblings. My siblings were normal. I was fat.

On a warm spring day in 1963, my mom pulled me into her bedroom and closed the door. She sat on the bed and patted the spot next to her to beckon me to sit beside her. I was nervous as I searched my mind trying to figure out what I could have done to be talked to alone. I slowly walked from the door toward the bed as my mom reached out for my hands as I cautiously sat down.

My mom cleared her throat and began.

“Honey, you know how much we love you.”

Oh no, I thought to myself. She’s going to tell me that I’m adopted. I knew it. I just knew it. (Because, it made perfect sense in the 60’s that the second of four kids would be adopted.)

“Yes,” I answered looking at her thumbs rubbing the tops of my hands.

“We love you so much and we know that being a little chubby makes you sad,” she stuttered.

I wanted to tell her that being a little chubby did not make me sad. Being picked on because of it made me sad. But I said nothing.

She began again. “Mary, you are such a pretty girl. You have the prettiest blonde hair and clearest blue eyes. I love your rosy cheeks and your beautiful smile.”

What I heard were the words my grandma repeated to me each time she saw me. “You’d be such a pretty girl if only you would lose some weight.”

I was damaged goods.

I started to cry. I continued to look down at our hands and saw the big raindrop tears fall from my eyes right on top of my mom’s thumbs.

“Oh Honey,” she said earnestly. “Please don’t cry. Your daddy and I just want what’s best for you and we think that it would be best if we took you to the doctor to put you on a diet. The school nurse suggested it and, well, we think it’s probably a good idea.”

With those words, the trickle of tears became a geyser. My mom, the person who was the protector of my heart and feelings when the kids sang, “Fatty, fatty two-by-four, can’t fit through the bathroom door,” betrayed me. She, with all her good intentions, was joining my tormentors by letting me know that I was different. I was not normal.

With that, my mom grabbed her purse and keys and we set off for Dr. Huibretgse’s office. I sat in the waiting room and slouched in my chair with my head down. I knew that everyone in that waiting room knew that while others were there because they were sick, I was there because I was fat.

“Donna,” the receptionist called out to my mom. “Doc would like to talk to you alone for a few minutes.”

“I’ll be right back,” my mom reassured me. “Everything is going to be okay.”

My mom was gone for a few minutes when the receptionist came over and told me to come with her. I felt the heat rushing to my cheeks. She took my hand and walked with me into the doctor’s office. Doc Huibretgse was sitting at his big wooden desk while my mother was sitting in a straight-back chair next to him. Next to my mom, hung a skeleton and a large scale.

“Well, who do we have here?” Doc asked cheerfully.

“This is Mary,” my mom stated with a smile, “and she’s very happy to be here.”

“Is that right, Mary?” he prompted me.

“No,” I mumbled quietly. “I want to go home.”

“I bet you do,” Doctor Huibretgse sympathized. “Why don’t you jump up here on this table and let’s you and me have a talk.”

I stepped up on the footstool and dropped myself onto the padded wooden table. Once settled, I dropped my chin to my chest and looked at my feet. Dr. Huibretgse wheeled himself over in his office chair until I could see the top of his head right beneath my chin. Doc reached up lifted my chin up until we were eye-to-eye.

“Mary, do the kids at school call you names?”

I nodded yes.

“And do the names make you feel bad?”

With tears in my eyes, I nodded yes.

“And do you wish that they would stop calling you names?”

Sniffling, I nodded yes.

“Do you think maybe if I helped you lose a little weight that maybe the kids would stop calling you names?”

I nodded yes.

“Then that’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to help you by putting you on what is called a “diet” so you could lose a little weight so the kids stop calling you names.”

“Okay,” I whispered.

“Okay,” Doc whispered back.

With that, Doc Huibretgse patted my knee and lifted me off the table. He steered me toward the large scale with weights and a sliding bar and began moving the bar. Once he had the scale balanced, he wrote down the number and had me turn around so he could get my height.

“Okay,” he stated. “We have all the facts. Now we need to get down to business.”

Doc Huibretgse talked with my mom about what I should and should not eat. He gave her different options and she jotted down a grocery list of foods that he suggested. He talked to me about staying tough and only eating the stuff that mom was going to buy specially for me at the grocery store. He told me to play outside more. I laughed because playing outside was my favorite thing to do and he was telling me to do it!

Loaded with facts, information and all the good intentions in the world, my mom and I emerged from the doctor’s office and soldiered on to Food Queen to gather the “right” foods for me. We bought Hollywood Diet Bread, cottage cheese, peaches, tuna, hamburger patties and best of all, my mom bought me a 6-pack of Tab.

When we got home, my mom cleared off a bottom shelf in one of the cupboards for “my” food. She told my siblings that they were not allowed to have any of my food because it was special food for a special girl. They didn’t care much about any of my special food other than the Tab. There was whining and complaining that I got to have soda.

In the end, the best part of the soda was that it was mine and mine alone. It had a strange taste to it somewhere between cinnamon and rusty horseshoes. Its bubbles burned my nose and throat as I tipped the can on my lips. It left a strange after-taste that would follow me long after I guzzled the soda. Truth be told, I would have preferred drinking water, but I didn’t want to hurt my mom’s feelings since she spent a lot of money for it so I could feel special.

My first diet lasted about as long as my special soda did. I may have lost of a few pounds before the cottage cheese and peaches were replaced with mashed potatoes and gravy, but I gained a brief taste of the process that I would welcome like a mother-in-law’s visit every couple of years throughout my life.

Being overweight is hard, unhealthy and socially unacceptable. Fixing it, for some of us, is even harder.

These days, the weight battle has less to do with vanity and more to do with longevity. My head knows that yet the struggle between health and some weird drive to fill an unknown emotional need with food continues. My current status is sixty pounds down after a year-long battle yet I feel my resolve fading. The new year bolstered my resolve and five pounds were gone in the first week of January. I’ve now stayed the same weight for the last three weeks and chastise myself each time I put something in my mouth that I shouldn’t.

Somewhere inside of me, that chubby little girl lives. She wants to look just like everyone else. She wants to be pretty without the if only. She wants to be normal.

While I have schooled her over the last 60 years that she is pretty enough, good enough and unique, the battle continues…