untipping the scales

I call my mother nearly every weekend. I do this because I know it's important to her, and on many levels, to me as well. After many years of strained relations, I've finally found a way to be with her. I won't go into great detail, other than to say that it is, at times, work (and I'll note that it's gotten easier over the past couple of years).

So after our last call, I thought a lot about my mom and her weight, and how, for my entire life, she's struggled.

When we talk about food, she always speaks of it in terms of being "in control" or "eating reasonably." And I realized that, like me, my mom's issues aren't really with food, but herself.

My mother is a binge eater. I know this from our converations, the rare occasions when she talks about trying to avoid "wiping out" a half gallon of ice cream by not letting it into the house.I know this from food she hid around the house, from growing up finding empty cartons and wrappers in the trash.

When my mother and I speak of food, I sense that unlike me, she is not passionate about it. I think that she is more of the FOOD HAPPENS school, and to her credit, perhaps this is the result of raising 4 kids. But when we speak of food, of preparation and eating, it sometimes feels like she's not connected--- either she has no interest, or for her generation (she's in her early 70's) the sensuality raised by food was taboo.

I'm not sure where I'm going with all of this. It saddens me that she has struggled with obesity as long as she has. It scares me that I may face the same struggle. I don't want to. I want to be at peace with myself, physically and mentally.

When I was a kid, a teenager, my mom and I would take these "before" pictures of each other when we got ready to embark on a diet. we dieted together many times. My success or failure was often tied directly to my mother's. As a child who lived to please her parents, I often did well with dieting. But when my mother beckoned me to go off the wagon with her it felt like betrayal-- her betrayal of me in changing course, and my betrayal of her if I didn't follow and eat whatever it was she wanted.

So now, when I am trying again to get to my goal weight, I feel conflict. When I tell my mother that I'm doing weight watchers, her response is one of muted support. There is always, between us, the implication of mother like daughter and daughter like mother-- always the implication that one should do as the other does. We are hundreds of miles apart, and not getting a little nod of approval about my weight loss feels like a slight.

Or so the first impression goes. And so I sit with this a little longer, and I feel all that sorrow-- hers and mine. And I realize that as inextricably tied to my mother as I am, this is my work. And maybe my heart opens to her a little more, to the unfathomable depths of her life, her history, all the things beneath her need to turn to food as solace. These were things that she, unwittingly, taught me. I learned them well. So I take a moment to forgive myself and my mother for doing what we needed to do to survive. I hold a moment of silence. I hold it in reverence to the power of food, the frailty of human beings, and the sense of Balance that resides deep inside all of us.