Fat Baby

"Alan is going to teach me how to be skinny."  My six year old daughter chirped at the dinner table as she bit into a stuffed grape leaf.
"Huh?"  Joe and I respond with unanimous concern.
"You know, my belly is a little fat, and Alan is so skinny."  Joycee says patting her stomach.
   I am looking at my curly haired angel with the long golden curls streaming down her back and wonder what flaw it is that she sees.
   "You do always say that I'm bony mom."  Alan says as he wipes his face and pushes his untouched dinner plate away.
   I remember six.  I remember sitting on the couch in the sun room of Grandma Benun's house.  As Grandma ate her half a head of lettuce with french dressing she loved me up with any candy, ice cream, cake and fruit I could want.  When mom and dad came to pick me up was the first time  I heard the famous quote that would jump start a life of poor body image and dietary contempt.
   "Tomorrow we start a diet." Mom gave a disapproving smirk to grandma at my snack choices.
   Unlike an adolescent, I was thrilled I got to do something like my mom.  First I'd start to drink Tab (in retrospect, the worst excuse for diet soda ever), then eat lettuce like grandma, maybe the next step would be high heels.  The word 'diet' soon dissipated into something that adult women did.  Until I turned nine.
    At nine years old,  I was broad.  My eyes seemed pinched and my cheeks were chipmunk round.  I never really noticed until three boys in my fourth grade class brought it to my attention.  The girls in my class were all very nice, but the meanly honest boys made me miserable.  There was one girl in the grade who was heavier than me.  When they teased her it was my shield, I felt relieved and horrible at the same time. 
    In February, my father made me a bet.  I had until tax day to lose up to 10 pounds.  I learned by myself, through trial and error, healthy eating and exercise, portion control and occasional self denial that I could lose weight on my own.  By April 15th, I lost 16 pounds. That was the upside.
     The downside was I never found a way to gauge my eating when I wasn't restricted, so every part of life became a diet.  And I discovered that when you diet, everything in life is focused on food.  Weight watchers, Slim Time, Diet Center, E-diets, Slim Fast, and anything posted on the cover of a Fashion magazine became my Bible when the scales tipped in the wrong direction.  Through puberty I took on the shape of a pear, while my younger sister looked like a cute little stick figure used on bathroom signs to designate 'boys' or 'girls.'
      At twenty, after binging on pizza, Soft Batch chocolate chip cookies, and my regular meals, I went temporarily insane. The morning after I ran to an Opti-fast clinic to join their program.  I wore my favorite ripped jeans, a football jersey I cut into a crop top, cracking on a piece of sugar-free bubblegum asking to sign up for their liquid diet.  I saw the severity of my response to a day of overeating, highlighted by the receptionist's plea for me to talk to their in- house psychologist.
     It took me many years of loving and loathing myself based on the numbers between my big toes each morning.  What I finally learned in my late 20's was regardless of my size, my weight, or my girth, love was not about a reflection in the mirror.  Chances are if I waited to love what I saw-that day may never have come.  I absolutely don't want it to be that way for my daughter.
    My memory bubble is popped and I am back to the present upon hearing Joycee's sad voice.
    "He calls me fat baby, and it really hurts my feelings."  Joycee says looking down.
     I glare at Alan who insists he will stop using that word.
     "Joycee, you are a beautiful, funny, nice girl. You  have your own body.  Everyone is different, and different is something beautiful."  I smiled to her.  I envied the fact that she will  never have to look into the bottom of glass of Diet Pepsi to feel better about herself.

     I don't know what scares me most about kids.  The things they see on the outside, or the thoughts they're holding on the inside.