He’s gone.
My son. My first baby.
My Little man, that somehow became a man when I wasn’t looking. He got on a plane…and he left me, for real this time.
He left me standing here crying and wondering how to sort out these feelings between relief and excitement that keep washing over me like waves that I don’t see coming. And as I stood there watching him check in his baggage, I was lost in a whirlwind of other moments, from a hundred other points in time when I had watched him go before.
We’ve all been there before. Post bad haircut, second-guessing our decision to be brave, and waiting for it to grow out with painstaking regret..and a new hat.
It’s only hair, right?
It will grow back, right?
I get that, I really do. But in order to understand why it’s so much more than that, you have to also understand what it represents, what it symbolizes, and why losing it and letting it go are two totally different things.
Long hair in literature is well documented as a sign of importance for various reasons. Samson’s hair was the root of his virility and strength. Lady Godiva would not have been half as memorable without her trademark long tresses. And of course there was Rapunzel.
But what about Rapunzel?
How would she have ever been rescued from the tower without her long flowing locks to aid in her liberation? She probably could have freed herself by chopping off her braid and using it mount a daring escape… but that’s not how the story goes. Actually, that’s not how any of the stories went when I was growing up.
Barbie had her Ken, Sleeping Beauty needed the Prince’s kiss to awaken her, Cinderella waited for Prince Charming to scoop her up out of abject servitude, and Snow White relied on the Seven Dwarves to protect her from the wrath of the jealous evil Queen.
But I always felt a little bit more like “Snow Off-White” in my early 20’s. I was the designated good natured chubby friend that was relegated to entertaining the awkward third wheel friend of the cute guy that was flirting with my gorgeous Malibu Barbie roommate. Making tedious conversation to pass the time, sipping wine coolers until she was ready for me to drive her home. Sadly, back then, the only (real life) Seven Dwarves that I ever encountered were Itchy, Scratchy, Burpie, Sleazy, Humpy, Gropey, and Prick.
I grew up envying Farrah Fawcett’s long feathery locks, the perfect coiffes of Charlie’s Angels, and Christie Brinkley’s flowing mane. Not to mention every Whitesnake video featuring a wild haired token beauty with her lustrous tendrils blowing in the wind in hair band slo-mo. Even Daryl Hannah in Splash, with her shock of blonde Mermaid hair adornment bewitched and beguiled me.
I wanted Mermaid hair.
I wanted what I never had. Continue reading Relinquishing Rapunzel
on yet another year,
She wondered if it was finally her time.
To live for herself,
and take her life off the shelf,
To tackle that mountain and climb.
But the journey seemed far,
and she had waited so long,
She’d grown weary from inside the gate,
She had learned how to be,
while dreaming to be free,
And she now pondered if it was too late. Continue reading The Gift
istockphoto.com
I honestly did believe that I had solved my problem. That I had moved past what was holding me back, and freed myself from all of the things that had kept me trapped inside of myself all of those years. I thought it was over once I finally shed the weight.
After all, I had worked really hard to lose over 150 pounds. I had put my nose to the grind stone and sacrificed more than I ever thought I could to give myself a chance at a healthy life. I put 100% of my effort into changing my life for the better, and I was hell-bent on never looking back. I was never going back to the way things were. I was adamant that I was never going to allow myself to undo what I had so purposefully done. And I wasn’t even a tiny bit worried that I might falter. I was Teflon, and I had put on a brave face.
That was my first mistake.
Because, truth be told, deep down, there was a lingering doubt. I always did feel like it was a little too good to be true. I had such great success all during my weight loss journey, that I started to wonder if I was just fooling myself. And the closer that I got to my final goal, I began to get nervous.
I had tried so many times to lose the weight in the past, so what had been so different this time? What was the catch?
Something had always happened.
Invariably something unforeseen would get in the way and derail me. Always my success would be hindered by some form of self sabotage, or an inevitable motivation meltdown.
I started having an undercurrent of anxiety the closer I got to my goal, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was outwardly excited and eager to finish what I had started, but still secretly cautious of failure. And as a result, I began having a recurring nightmare that I couldn’t shake. It was always there on the outskirts of my consciousness haunting me. Continue reading The Year of the Purge
It was a dark and chilly day in November.
And after what had seemed like an endless ride up to the surgical floor, I found myself peering out of the 3rd story window, nervously playing with the zipper on my jacket and looking down, out onto the street below. My chestnut hair was tied back into a ponytail and my flip-flops were still wet from the downpour in the parking lot.
My sister had gone to the front desk to check me in for my surgery.
A week before, when my doctor had given me the bad news, it had been hard to hear anything else hopeful that she had said after that. What has started out as anemia at a regular doctors appointment had lead me to a hematologist and then had snowballed into something much bigger after a visit to my OB/GYN.
It had all happened so fast.
The word “tumors” had to rung in my ears, and sent a panic into my otherwise ordinary life. Then after monitoring the situation closely for a few weeks I was disheartened to hear that they had grown exponentially, to a dangerously volatile size. So in light of this new sense of urgency we had opted for the surgery in the hopes of possibly getting ahead of it.
I had asked if we could wait till after the holidays. but after seeing the progression and how rapidly the situation was worsening, my doctor said that it would not be a good idea to wait.
So here I was, inside my own nightmare wondering what tomorrow would bring.
The worst part was, that we wouldn’t even fully know the scope of the issues until the surgery had begun. Only then would we know what exactly we were dealing with. So I had no idea if I would wake up and go home with a huge sigh of relief, or if I was going to awaken to even more jarring news and be facing something much more daunting.
The unknown outcome hung over me like a thick fog, and I had been dreading this day as it ticked closer. I was becoming very familiar with the idea of my own mortality, and it was frightening.
I was terrified.
And it felt like the last normal day of my life. Continue reading The Girl in the Window
Two words-
Pumpkin. Spice.
The two most highly anticipated and dreaded words to tickle the ears of a compulsive spice-a-holic.
The two words that signal the beginning of the delectable holiday season.
The struggle is real.
It starts on October 1st with pumpkins, and ends in a peppermint flavored melt down that torches any illusions that I will be wearing anything other than regret come January 2nd.
And the Pumpkin Spice Faerie is the first harbinger of the impending onslaught of the spice inducing carnage.
She is the tell tale Dickens-esque ghost of holidays past that triggers my inner warning light and sends up my hazard flares.
Her appearance reminds me to tread carefully through the spice laden mine fields that lie out stretched between me and the first of the year…
And me and my pants.
“Hey, does this spice make my butt look big?” Continue reading Spice-a-holics Anonymous
Not for the faint of heart, I give to you this cautionary tale of one little boy’s brush with fevered regret, that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, that one tiny voice of reason can indeed save the day.
But first, we have to go back, way back…to the story before the story of that fateful day…
I love Halloween.
And back in the day, when I was a little girl, Halloween was always a big deal at our house. Trick-or-treating was something that was looked forward to with great anticipation.
Every year, my sister and I would go to great lengths to come up with inventive and elaborately bewitching costumes. We would painstakingly plot out our route through the neighborhood to get maximum candy canvassing, and stake out the good stuff for a second hit.
One year, I even attempted to lock my sister in the bathroom, and carried an extra pillow case with me and told a sad story of her suddenly falling ill, and being the nice sister that I was I was, I was collecting candy for her as well.
Of course, it was a total fabrication, and after she escaped, I was questioned by a neighbor who had inquired as to why then, had my poor sick sister already knocked on her door? My poorly executed farce had been exposed. I did briefly entertain the idea of abandoning my life of criminal mischeif, but then I decided that the next year I would just go to a different neighborhood, where nobody knew me.
Muahahah! Diabolical, I know, but I take my candy very seriously.
Growing up in Arizona, it always seemed like right around Halloween was when it would finally start to get chilly and I would always worry that my mother would force me wear a coat over my costume.
This was not acceptable.
I mean, who wants to see Wonder Woman wearing a zip up windbreaker?
You can not effectively fight crime in seasonably appropriate outerwear.
How ridiculous would it be if I had to peel off a hat and a scarf before I could jump into my invisible jet and race off to save the world?
Nobody in their right mind would take Wonder Woman seriously if she was wearing a winter coat over her kick ass wonder woman outfit, or if her lasso of truth was all tangled up in her poncho.
But sadly, most of the time my pleas of protest would fall upon deaf ears, and I would end up angrily stomping down the street, stewing in my own juices, while toting my empty grocery bag, and grimacing with distaste as my winter wardrobe eclipsed my Wonder Woman awesomeness.
It was then, that I swore, that when I became a mother, I would never humiliate my children in such a way as to force my overly protective motherly whims upon them. And if my son wanted to be Superman, then he would be Superman in a cape… and not Superman in a parka.
I was going to be the one to finally break the cycle of crimes against Halloween.
Then, many years later, we had taken a trip to Disneyland with my then three-year-old son. His favorite ride was the Pirates of the Caribbean, and for Halloween he wanted to be a pirate. I think we must have ridden that ride over a half a dozen times before I had finally had enough. I dragged him out of there kicking in screaming. In hindsight,taking a toddler to a amusement park was probably not one of my better ideas.
Yo, ho ho and (mommy needs) a bottle of rum.
So needless to say, when Halloween finally rolled around, and he still decided that he wanted to be a pirate, I jumped at the chance to go all out and make him the most awesome pirate he could be. I probably even went a little overboard because I wanted his first real Halloween to be super awesome.
And as a result, he ended up having the best pirate costume provided by an overcompensating mother that a three-year-old could possibly have. Right down to the pirates booty. He wanted treasure, so I went and bought gold chocolate Doubloon’s, and a whole crap load of Almond Roca’s wrapped in gold foil. It looked just like a real pirates treasure, and he was extremely pleased.
Then, in November of that same year, we had attended a Thanksgiving family gathering.
My grandmother always had fantastical treats and petite fours laid out along with truffles and assorted candies galore. It was a difficult task trying to keep my young son away from all of the eye level temptations in his path.
At one point, my Aunt Wendy had picked up a perfectly wrapped Almond Roca and was admiring it’s shiny golden wrapper. And as she began to delicately unwrap it to reveal the delicious treat that lied within, my son, who had been watching her very carefully, began to seem uneasy.
He pulled away from my grip, and in what seemed like slow-motion started sprinting across the room towards her. He shouted “Noooooooo!” as he approached her, which in my mind’s eye sounded like a long drawn out exclamation of impending horror.
It all unfolded in such swiftness that I think my mind slowed it down in order to comprehend what was happening.
She blinked and turned towards him as he raced in her direction. She had finally unwrapped the delicious delight and was raising it to her lips when he arrived.
He reached up and smacked it right out of her hand post haste, in an effort to stop her from placing it into her mouth. And again he shouted, “Noooooo! Bad candy! Bad candy!!!!”
He was visibly upset, and quite insistent that she NOT partake in the aforementioned “bad candy”.
Of course I was also horrified, because I immediately assumed that he did not want her to eat it because it was “treasure”, and I had told him that we cannot eat the treasure. But then I thought maybe he knew what I had done, that I had eaten his hoard, and maybe he was trying to tell her that his gluttonous mother was the only one who was allowed to have it.
I was terrified that he was about to embarrass me beyond belief. I was afraid that “the incident” was about to come back to haunt me.
My stunned Aunt looked so perplexed after having the candy literally slapped out of her mouth, and I jumped up to scoop him as quickly as I could into another room.
The poor kid was hysterical and I kept trying to ask him what was wrong but he just kept sobbing and saying “bad candy, bad candy”.
After about 30 minutes he had cried himself to sleep, and I had tiptoed out of the room to back out to the party to apologize. Of course, everyone had inquired as to what could have possibly come over him, but I just said that I had no knowledge as to the origins of his sudden outburst.
Later that night as we were walking into the house, and I was following behind my husband as he was carrying our sleeping son. And as we paused just inside the door to drop all of our belongings, our little guy slightly awoke for just a moment, and pointed his tiny finger down towards the floor.
Then he raised his head, and in his exhausted little baby voice he once again softly uttered the words “bad…candy…”
I followed the direction of his finger as he pointed towards the cat’s litter box, filled with a plethora of cat poops covered in cat litter.
Bad candy…?
And then, as I made notice of the resemblance between the Almond Roca’s and the cat box offerings, I finally understood.
As soon as I put two and two together, I realized, that this brave little boy had at some point “sampled” the treasures in the kitty cat treasure chest, and had not only found them to be most disagreeable, but also quite offensive.
Clearly, he had all but confirmed for himself why I had asked him to not eat the treasures, and had lived a life of fevered regret ever since.
And upon witnessing another hapless victim nearly falling prey to the lure of the bad candy, he had felt compelled to act. Because even though he had made a terrible decision and paid for it dearly, he had still tried to save a clueless Aunt Wendy from making the same horribly regrettable mistake.
He had valiantly taken one for the team.
He was a hero.
And now, every time I see an Almond Roca, I think about the bad candy, and how much it looks like something very unappetizing. And pretty much ever since, it has been unable to render any more of its magic powers over me, all thanks to the selfless sacrifice of one brave little boy.
So the next year, when our little superhero wanted to be Batman for Halloween, I made sure he had a right and proper cape, so that he could go out there and save the world…
One piece of bad candy at a time.
*************************
How you feel on the inside is directly connected to how you present yourself on the outside. And it becomes harder to manage it the worse you feel. Often times it’s so involuntary that it evolves without notice.
Having dealt with weight issues even as a child, and having been overweight/ morbidly obese my entire adult life, I had adjusted to my state of being in a way that found me complacent to its challenges.
I had “adjusted” to my limitations and found a certain level of comfort in it.
But once my weight loss began…
Once I started feeling differently in my body…
Well, I started to feel “skinny(ish)”.
It was a state of mind that was created by a boost in confidence that had allowed me to picture a new reality for myself.
And even though I knew that I still had a long way to go, the tide had turned, and the feeling was palpable.
With every pound lost I began to feel thinner. Even when nothing physical was noticeably different, I felt the change manifesting from within.
I knew I wasn’t “skinny”, but I was skinny(ish), and that was a million dollar feeling.
But, once I reached my weight-loss goal, and the hovering began, I noticed that that feeling was harder and harder to hold onto. Continue reading Fat(ish)
Seeing yourself from the inside-out can be challenging.
Sometimes, seeing who you are in a multitude of perspectives can give you a much more comprehensive view of yourself as a whole, and give you much-needed insight as to what you’re made of, down a deep, where it really counts.
When I started my weight loss journey it felt like I was standing at the base of a monolithic mountain and looking up to the summit and thinking “That is impossible. I cannot climb that.”
But sometimes you’re not aware of what you’re capable of until you have to be.
Until you step up to that plate and take your swing, you may not even know if you can hit the ball.
It’s easy to get tunnel vision, and to corner yourself into a narrow way of thinking that does not allow you to see outside of the parameters that you have established. What’s not easy, however, is to harness the ability look at yourself differently than you have become accustomed.
Viewing the world in a different way can open you up to ideas and practices that you may have never entertained otherwise.
As a parent, I have had been privy to a multitude of refreshing moments and perspective changing conversations with both of my boys, and sometimes you can forget that the world can be viewed in many many different ways.
But every once in a while, as a grown-up, you have a particular moment where you get a glimpse into the mind of someone that redirects your own thinking. And on this particular occasion it was through the “fresh eyes” of my seven year-old son.
While driving by a local bookstore, we had stopped at a red light, and my son, who had just learned to read, was peering out the window.
There was a large banner in front the bookstore that read, ‘Giant Book Sale!’
My son, after reading it aloud, then turned to me with a perplexed expression and asked, “Mom, why are only the giant books on sale?”
It caught me a little off guard, but then I realized that to him, it was a valid question.
And after trying to explain to him that it was the word “giant” was referring to the size of the sale and not the size of the books, I stopped myself, and just tried to look at the sign from his perspective.
I suppose it would have been less confusing if the sign has simply stated “giant sale on books”. But because most things in this world are left to our own interpretations, and the English language in itself is fairly complex, we are left with our own deciphering of the world around us to help us make sense of our surroundings.
So rather then correcting him, I gave him an answer.
I told him that perhaps they had too many giant books, and had run out of room, so maybe they needed to sell more of them to make space for the smaller ones. He seemed satisfied with that answer, and that was that.
That particular encounter had prompted me to begin thinking about the value of true perspective. Continue reading The View From Here
Same Hat, Different Me 