Blessing or Curse

“We were blessed with cute faces,” my father explained to his chubby fourth-grade daughter.  He was trying to comfort me as I sat across the table from him at the Howard Johnson’s All-You-Can-Eat Fried Clams night, a ritual I endured every Tuesday after my brother’s basketball practice at the JCC.  I was on a diet, so I wasn’t bellying up to the clam bar with my brother and our neighbor’s three children.  At nine-years old, I was already sitting with the moms, sipping a Tab and ordering the diet plate--a plain hamburger patty and scoop of cottage cheese with a side of canned peaches.

My father rationalized that if you had a cute face, you could get away with being a little pudgy and still be attractive.  That may have been the case for a middle-aged married man living in the suburbs in the early 80’s, but it wasn’t my reality.  I felt pressure to be skinny, not sturdy.  I was actually cursed with a gene pool of giants.

My most painful memory during those years is of the day they weighed us at school and the nurse announced each student’s weight over her shoulder to the clerk recording the numbers.  As I waited in line, my heart raced with anxiety.  I knew I weighed more than all the other kids.  No one else in my class weighed over 100 lbs.  When it was my turn, I made eye contact with the nurse and silently pleaded with her to not share my weight out loud. 

“Lisa Barnhouse, 103.”

I don’t remember if the other kids were shocked, or if I was teased, or if Jeff Shaller, the tall blonde boy who made up songs about my Barn butt, was even there that day.  I just recall the fear.

First Born Prince got really round and soft right before he started shooting up overnight.  One day he looked like maybe he should skip a meal and the next he was lanky and needed bigger shoes.  When I talked to his pediatrician about it, he told me that males lose 25% of their body fat when they go through puberty, while girls gain 40% (yes, boobs and hips are made out of fat, people).

I am glad I didn’t give him the cute-face pep talk.  Nor put him on a diet.  I reassured him he was exactly the right size for someone born 11 pounds and predicted to grow up to somewhere between 6’8” and 7 feet tall. 

Charming Baby is also the biggest kid in his class, just like his “big boned” mother and “baby fat” brother, except he doesn’t worry or feel self-conscious.  He marches to his own beat, one giant step at a time.  I only realize it’s a challenge at all when he has a growth spurt and gets clumsy all of the sudden.  Just this week he fell twice on the playground, tripping over his own feet that have grown two sizes since September.

For comforting my baby, I simply kiss his scraped-up chin and tell him I am sorry he got hurt.  Looking at that cute face he was blessed with, I don’t think there’s much else to say.