Perspective

I've gone from feeling ecstatic that I have bones (ribs! a collarbone! hip bones!) to focusing once again on the burbles of flesh left. There are the rolls I can pull from my stomach, the flaps under my arms, the dangly bits of thigh.

An elderly lady friend stopped me the other day to tell me she has been meaning to tell me that of all the people she has known who have undergone dramatic weight loss, my skin is the tightest. I was surprised, though after reflection, I realized that all most people see is my face and that, indeed, has done very well.

The other parts, the ones hidden from the outside world for another good six months, aren't bouncing back as quickly. When I see the wrinkles on my inner thighs I flash first to my mother, since these are how I remember her thighs, and second, to a conversation I had in sixth grade.

I had noticed that when I put my ankle on my opposite knee to cross my legs I had stripes in my skin. I was amazed and pointed out this discovery to my friend, Sarah, who was sitting next to me in band.

"Those are stretch marks," she said, apologetically, and turned back to her music. Needless to say, I flew my foot back to the floor and flushed my embarrassment into my clarinet.

Only now does it occur to me to wonder how on earth she of the giraffe nickname, she the descendant of two of the gangly-folk clan, she could have known about stretch marks. Especially before I, descendant of the can't-leave-your-room obese kind, did.

So here I am, becoming more and more familiar with the impulse that I imagine drives anorexia. Wanting to control, wanting the external image to be perfect. Wanting no one to notice any faults. Never quite being perfect enough.

I celebrate that I have the ab muscles to do the hula hoop and high kicks. I honor that I can see air between my thighs, something I have never-ever, even as a teenager, been able to do. I am overjoyed that I can use my left hand to unclasp my seat belt when I drive in my driveway. That I prefer to take the stairs. These things do still make me marvel. But yet. But yet.

There is also the conversation I recall from around the same time, the one with my aunt. The context is fuzzy and unimportant anyway. To her, it was a funny story. Perhaps I had asked about my father's grandmother. What she looked like, what she was like. What I got was a hearty laugh.

"Well, she was a big woman and when she got old, her flat breasts hung below her waist and bugged the heck out of her. So she rolled them up and tucked them under her arm."

I still shudder.