Try this on for size

Hi. My name is Mimi. I'm 5'7" tall and I weigh 128 pounds. My problem, my problem for what feels like my whole life, is this: I distrust my body. I am not sure how it looks, if it works right, if it is normal. If it is right. If I can even see it right.

I know my mind pretty well. My consciousness and I have spent a lot of time together, and, frankly, not much that it does surprises me.

My body surprises me all the time. How can it be that I see a pudgy, lumpy wrinkly Mom when I look in the mirror, but most snapshots show me to be willowy, dramatic, and even sometimes chic? I can't square that circle. If you tell my I'm smart, funny, a good writer, I will blush a little but probably assent to the compliment. If you tell me I'm pretty, or sexy, or thin, I will honestly argue you out of it.

How do we come to this funhouse mirror effect? It's like my body is a problem I simply cannot make sense of. I've been thinking a lot lately about the usual suspects--the beauty and fashion industries, insanely thin Hollywood standards, etc.--but I wonder if my dysmorphia has other roots as well. Roots in my closet.

Try this on for size:

I have to buy specialty bras, because my rib cage takes a 30" band. This is probably why the fitted dresses I buy are often size 2. However, all my t-shirts are size Large, or else they're too narrow across the shoulders. Invariably, they're too short in the waist. Also, I wear size Large maternity tank tops nearly every day. So: you guess. On top, am I small or am I big?

All my pants are too long: I have short legs. I have to get everything hemmed up. My pants are all size 4 or size 6. But my underwear are invariably purchased in size Large, because anything smaller cuts into my legs and my belly. And Large is none too large, believe me. I buy Medium pajama bottoms, and they're usually too short but they're plenty baggy. And another complication--the size 8 jeans I wore in high school, and my more recent size 4 pair, when laid one atop the other, show themselves to be exactly the same size. So: on bottom, am I small or am I big? Stumpy or leggy?

Sweaters? Most mediums have arms and bodies that are too short. Coats? My best fitting one is a size 4 from the petite section.

The BMI charts put me a the low end of healthy; but everything on me jiggles and wobbles when I move. I can't square the circle. I have no idea what I look like, no idea at all.

I'm a thinker. I've tried and tried and tried to think my way out of this blindness, this unknowing. I guess I "know", objectively, that I'm a thin person, but to know something objectively is not to know it in your gut--in your body. In my body. And, other than pregnancy and childbirth and breastfeeding, my body is where I don't feel like I know much at all, and that makes me feel like a failure on a number of fronts.

I don't want you, Interverse, to tell me I'm pretty or that I'm thin. I want to know how--if--you have come into a sense of yourselves as whole, as knowable. How you can see yourselves as you are, without a shimmer of distortion blurring you right out of the picture.

Incident Report

Like S-- last week, M-- approached us sheepishly tonight when we picked up Munchkin at daycare. Out of the corner of my eye I registered that my girl was not wearing shoes, which was odd.

"I feel soooo bad," said M--, "We were all taking off our outside clothes and Munchkin was standing so close to me that when I shuffled my chair over as I turned around, I felt it come down on her foot ..."

M-- at this point looks really tortured, and hastens to add, "I didn't bring my whole weight down on it but she was really clingy so I held her for a long time and then when I put her down she just cried and cried and cried, so we've put an ice pack on it ..."

Ah, no shoes. Icepack. Gotcha. An incident report has been logged, just like last week.

Last week? Well, last week S-- called me at work: "Don't worry, everything's okay," she offered right after 'hello,' which is the standard procedure when daycare calls you at work, "It's just, I feel sooooo bad because I knocked Munchkin over and we think she might have hit her head a little."

Knocked her over?

"Well, she snuck up right behind me, really close, and I didn't notice her there, and when I turned around, I sort of, I'm sooooo sorry, tripped over her and we both fell down."

R-- later pulls me aside to tell me that she thinks S-- was hurt worse than Munchkin, who simply wanted to be held and consoled. Munchkin got a black eye, but S-- is still apologizing.

Tonight though, I'm grateful for these reports if not the incidents themselves. I'm grateful, particularly, for a couple of insights they grant.

First, I'm glad to know I'm not being hysterical or touchy when I describe Munchkin as fantastically clingy lately. When I say she spends a disproportionate amount of time wrapped around my leg, stepping on my feet, wedging herself in between me and the kitchen counter? Well, the stories from daycare--where she is literally underfoot--seem to bear this out. Keep your friends close, and keep your Mommy closer: that's Munchkin's watchword. So, second, I'm grateful that when I'm not around, there's people at daycare she cares enough about to put herself in the path of injury to be near them. And that these people will hold her and pat her booboos and give her icepacks and a special book. Frankly, they remind me that her clinginess is a gift, an expression of love, a toddler 'thing'.

But maybe until she loosens her bonds of proximity a little bit, we should all be more careful about changing direction, shifting our weight, reaching out our arms, or stopping abruptly. All these incident reports. It's a lot of paper. Hey--here's another thing to be grateful for! I've managed never to injure her when she's stuck to me like glue!

Spring Triptych

Enjoy the sun on your faces, the wind in your hair, everyone!

Twist

We went Way the Hell Up North, Munchkin and I, for a wee break. And part of the rupture of routine was to have my perceptions of my own mother twisted somehow.

I read the paper and looked out at the lake as Munchkin played teaset happily by herself. After a while her orbit tightened around my chair, as it will, and she started to get a little silly. She pulled my slipper off one foot and turned into 'the Tickle Monster!' She laughed at her powers as she reduced me to chortles. This carried on for a while and, fair's fair, she asked me to tickler her in her turn. She dangled a little foot towards me.

I pounced, tackling her onto the carpet, the two of us rolling and squealing. Tickle fights are a fine exercise in self-control for all parties: the pleasure of a helpless laugh is counterbalanced against, well, the helplessness.

"Stop it, Mimi, for God's sake," my mom intervened from the kitchen.

I was annoyed, a little, that she was mad at me for roughhousing with Munchkin--she was probably, I figured, irritated by the noise, or by Munchkin's obviously mounting excitement. Did she think it was too close to lunch, or I would crack both our heads on an end table? Or was it simply indecorous or maybe overindulgent.

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, Mom, I've got it under control."

She put her hands on the counter. "It's just that my mom used to tickle me mercilessly when I was little and it was really awful."

Empathy. For Munchkin. Not a critique on my parenting, per se. A snippet from her childhood. An admission of past vulnerability.

Huh. Tweak! I gave them both hugs.

Toddler 1, Daddy 1

Just in case you're keeping score, Pynchon evened the game.

From the bathroom early this morning, as I fished around my makeup bag looking for my eyeliner, I listened to Pynchon and Munchkin in the midst of their daily, heated, wardrobe negotiation. To give you some context, we consider the negotiations successful if, after protracted struggle, at least two of the three following conditions obtain:

- all the major parts of the body that should be covered are covered
- no one has been materially or mortally injured
- we all wind up no more than 40-60 minutes late for work

So I was surprised to hear Pynchon hold firm on the morning's wardrobe lineup: purple princess shirt with matching socks and the dreaded Auntie Heather Pants. The dreaded Auntie Heather Pants are a gift from--can you guess?--Pynchon's sister Heather. They are a really nice, roomy, cute pair of chinos with an embroidered flower on one leg and adorable useless little pockets just the right size to hold tiny ponies. But if you press them toward Munchkin? She will scream the house down and lash out so violently from all four limbs that we tend at that juncture to just drag her into the middle of her room and let her thrash on the carpet until her rage is spent.

So I was surprised to hear Pynchon deflecting Munchkin's "NO! I don't WANT to wear THESE PANTS" by pressing them upon her once more.

The gambit: "Well, Munchkin, these are not your Auntie Heather Pants. No, we had to throw those away because you didn't like them at all and you did NOT want to wear THOSE pants."

She listened. He continued, conspiratorially: "These are ... Wacky! Khakis!"

Can you believe it? She put them on and sang the Wacky Khaki song for the rest of the day. Huh. And the game is tied at one apiece. I'm impressed.