The Day My 11-Year-Old Told Me She was Fat

We were camping when she said it. I was distracted, barely paying attention. “What did you say?” I asked her. Absent-mindedly looking at my phone, observing her brother in the pool, sipping on a zero calorie drink. “I look fat in that one.” The words dropped between us like someone had just plugged a third person there. They covered me up like a dark cloud. I felt claustrophobic at first from it. I stopped sipping, stopped observing, everything else but her.

“I look fat in that other bathing suit, so I didn’t wear it. I wore this one. The one piece. No one will make fun of me in this one.”

I felt my heart crack just a little bit.

Suddenly she was two months old, skin and bones in the NICU, swaddled in a lilac blanket. I was listening to the nurse tell me about how ineffective her last feedings were. How they had to help her maintain her temperature, how she cried through all her bottles. I was back at Ronald McDonald House, thinking all about numbers. The weight she needed to gain, the money I didn’t have for lunch. One pound, thirteen ounces, two pounds one ounce, back down again to to one pound and twelve ounces this time.

How ironic that now we were having this conversation about weighing too much, when for so long, putting weight on her consumed all of my thoughts.

“Who said you looked fat in that?”

I asked it quickly, because conversations like these with my pre-teen can be so brief. She is an old soul. Get in, get out, say what you need too, but don’t stay too long. Keep going through the drive thru. If you didn’t hear the order the first time, you are screwed, because she will keep going.

I went through a laundry list of boys in my mind. Getting ready to smash their i phones, cursing Snap Chat. I told myself I would find that little Devon Sawa.

“No one, I just know it. I knew it when I looked in the mirror.”

This was worse. Because then I couldn’t blame it on some little prebuscent piece of shit like I wanted too. Maybe it was on me. Maybe she noticed all my extra working out, the way I changed my outfit two or three times in the mirror, looking sideways at myself.

Even so. We cook food together. Her and I. That is our thing.

The baking. The food joy. The cinnamon smells. I didn’t learn to make rolls from my Gram, only to munch helplessly on celery while some boy judges me across the table. Hell no. And I certainly don’t want that for her. Food is family, muffins are happiness, a mixer can emote the same sound as a chubby toddler laughing.

I resolutely told her she was not fat. She was beautiful. When she reminded me I didn’t wear the bathing suit I brought. I paused. “I will tomorrow I told her.” When she asked what if other people didn’t like the way it looked. I reminded her I didn’t run for ten miles every Saturday to wear wind pants in the water.

She looked relieved when I said this. She exhaled slowly and giggled nervously. I am the lamest person she knows. The worst singer, the most embarassing person on the planet and yet I”m still her safe place to land.

Later in the evening, I told my two friends about her comment over the fire pit. My one friend doesn’t have girls, but it doesn’t matter because she is raising boys who will treat them right and she has defended me wordlessly and with searing swear words for years and years. My other friend has one of each, and in the same dilemma. They both looked aghast, peered across the road at my Nat and then back at me.

Then one of them spoke sharply. “Now I”m going to have to start eating these fireside nachos in a string bikini.” My heart smiled in her comment. She got it instantly, the pressure I felt to raise a healthy person, not just a human to shrink herself to fit into the way the mirror said she ought to look, but a well rounded, non-asshole, be there for your best friend always person. Later that night my friend chased down the pie car for me. They didn’t have apple, which is my favorite, but she got the blueberry anyway. We both handed Nat a piece and then in the morning got up and ran together.

I realized in that moment, that I can’t balk when my daughter makes a comment about herself, about her weight, because I am not the only person she is watching. I hurt for her if someone does make an off handed comment that is overflowing with assholery, but I want more than anything to surround her with people who show her just exactly how fabulous she is. I want her people to wave that magic mirror until she can wave it for herself.