Holiday Dread

Another Halloween has passed. I didn’t go to any parties. I didn’t dress up. I didn’t get down the box of Halloween decorations. Just today, I bought three pumpkins and turned one into a Jack O’ Lantern, scraping the seeds onto a cookie sheet and baking them for Kevin. I bought too much candy again, we only had about 25 trick or treaters. Kevin was sick today, so he didn’t go out. I bought all of his favorites when I shopped this morning, so he just trick or treated here. He opened the Halloween box from his Aunt Cindy and stuffed himself with gummy worms until he was sick to his stomach.

Such is Halloween.

Tomorrow is November 1st, and before you know it, Thanksgiving will be here. Already, I hear people discussing their plans as I wait in line at the grocery checkout or the post office. I look forward to Thanksgiving. I know my boys are looking forward to it, have already asked me about it, hoping that I will be finished dieting so that they can have the feast of our family tradition.

For the most part, I’m dreading the upcoming holiday season. For the third year in a row, I will have no sweetheart to shop for, no one to sample my Christmas cookies, no one to kiss under the mistletoe, or hold hands at the midnight Christmas Eve service. I dread the forced cheerfulness that I know I must project for my family, my friends and my co-workers. My office manager scheduled our firm Christmas luncheon today and my stomach roiled.

I’ve been feeling particularly hopeless about this situation ever changing. It has been three long years since I had any semblance of a real, romantic “relationship” and even longer since I had one with any potential of ever being anything permanent. I signed up with eHarmony to combat my melancholy, and I have been “matched” to fifty men over the past week. I’m not communicating with any of them. If I like them, they don’t like me. If they like me, I don’t like them.

Story of my life.

I signed up for a year, just to thumb my nose at my pessimism.

Tomorrow is the last day of the reducing phase of my diet. After tomorrow, I’ll begin “Adapting” which week by week, I will add back foods and reduce the number of shakes I drink a day. Adapting lasts for six weeks, and many people continue to lose weight during that time. After Adapting comes Sustaining, which lasts for at least a year, and continues for just as long as each individual cares to keep coming back.

A part of me is mourning the switch back to real food. I’m a little scared, because lord knows, I don’t want to gain back any of the weight I’ve lost. Just the opposite, I’m hoping to lose another 30 pounds. I will also miss the convenience of not having to cook, and the savings of not having to eat out lunches. Mostly, I will miss the safety of knowing that my eating is under control, even if that control is external. Adapting means adapting control away from the weight loss program and back to myself.

I don’t know if I’m up to the task.

The gym seems to be a way of life for me, and as long as I continue going every weekday, I’m pretty sure I can maintain regardless of what I eat. But it sure takes a lot of time, and when busy season starts, can I really afford that time? Can I really afford to NOT take the time?

There was a part of me that fantasized, when I started this diet, that during the course of the program, I’d meet the man of my dreams and wow him with my dedication and progression into svelte. I hoped to perhaps even meet him at the center, thereby having an immediate connection, and a shared experience from the get go. When that didn’t happen, I hoped that when my celibacy ended and I went back online, that my newly slimmed pictures would inspire the man of my dreams to pick me out of the crowd. I hoped that the combination of words and image would make me special.

I’m not feeling very special right now.

I’m feeling rather ordinary and a bit let down. It didn’t work out the way I had hoped. I’m 45 pounds lighter than I was 16 weeks ago, but not one bit happier. Somehow, when one has a lot of weight to lose, one is able to scapegoat the fat and think that if it were somehow magically gone, so would be all the troubles.

It simply doesn’t work that way.

Because I am me, though, I can’t help but look on the bright side. I’m in every single stitch of skinny clothes in my closet. If I lose the other 30 pounds, I most assuredly will get to do some major shopping. I am feeling myself IN my body now, much moreso than I ever have before in my life. My leg muscles are like rocks. I was lying in bed one morning and happened to bump my hand against my leg and scared myself because the muscles were so hard and developed. This morning, I noted that I could now feel the bones in my chest. My clavicle is visible to the naked eye. Speaking of which, I like to look at my body as I towel myself dry from the shower. I like the sleek lines, the well established curves. That’s me I’m looking at and I like it.

So why am I so sad?

At one of the early classes, we had to go around the room and tell everyone why we were there. Most people said they were there because of health issues. For some it was because of high blood pressure, or arthritis or diabetes. For one it was because he couldn’t walk across the room without being out of breath. One woman said it was so she could wear the very expensive skinny clothes currently relegated to the back of her closet. I listened intently to all of them. When it was my turn, I explained to them that I have always thought I was beautiful, even to the day I started the program. I told them that my blood work was perfect, my cholesterol was ideal, my blood pressure was low, I could run up a flight of stairs without breathing hard and I could still do a cartwheel. I told them that I was there for one reason and one reason only. I wanted to find a husband. I wanted to find a husband and as long as I weighed as much as I weighed, I eliminated myself from 85% of the pool of eligible men out there. My participation was not a matter of life and death, unless you count the slow death of despair that comes from unending loneliness.

In a few short years, my boys will be gone. Yesterday, in the guidance counselor’s office, Greg said he wanted to go to college in California.

California!

My sweet Greg, the son who gets me, wants to go to California.

And of course, of course, he should. And he will. And I will experience the pain of loss that scores of mothers have experienced before me. When that day comes, I need to be ready. I need to have either reconciled myself to my alone status, filling the void in other ways, or I need to….I need to….I can’t even bring myself to type it.

What will happen, will happen. I just wish the Universe would stop laughing at me so hard and give me what I need.

Charity

The car door slammed in finality and I curved the car from the driveway. I glanced to my left as I pulled away, reminding myself to dispense of the half mountain of mulch still piled on the driveway in front of my shed. I have hopes of planting tulip bulbs after I finish my kitchen painting project.

“Seatbelts, boys?” I asked as we wound our way up Charlotte Avenue, stopping at the light on Springfield Pike. “How much do you want to bet that we have to turn around before we get out of Wyoming because we forgot something.” I quipped to no one in particular.

“How much do you want to bet that MOM forgot something.” Scott replied sardonically.

I laughed, my son knew me so well. We were an hour out of town before I realized that I forgot my bottle of water and all of my diet food, left sitting on the stove in the kitchen. Too late to turn around, though, we were already going to be about 20 minutes late for the rehearsal dinner. I fussed over that inside my head for over an hour, resigning myself to strong self control. It would be a test.
“Oooh, boys, look at the leaves!”

I craned my neck to see the fall foliage blooming around us. The boys actually looked up from their video games to concur in my appreciation. All the worry of the drought robbing us of nature’s fall fashions was for naught. The trees were robust in their bursts of earthy toned beauty. They serenaded us with their siren songs of abundance and the endings thereof all the way from Cincinnati to Lake Michigan.
We threaded our way through the winding traffic of Indianapolis and Kokomo, sailed across the prairies of Indiana to New Carlisle, and the rehearsal dinner for my nephew’s wedding. Kevin was the ringbearer, Scott and Greg were ushers. I had a new red dress for the occasion, and the opportunity to show off the weight I’d lost since my family had last seen me. Although we were acquainted with Cheryl, we had never met most of the folks in the wedding.

The rehearsal was light hearted and fun, directed expertly by the Methodist minister officiating. My boys paid attention, learned their roles, and behaved themselves admirably, before, during and after. I watched the glum face of Cheryl’s father, wiping away a few tears when he thought no one was looking. I stifled envious thoughts. Weddings are hard for me, regardless of who is tying the knot. Watching proud papas and tremulous daddy’s little girls is gut wrenchingly painful.

I listened to the scripture reading, the one that is always read at weddings, this time, read by Cheryl’s sister. I wanted to rip the bible out of her hands and say, “no, read it like this….” The scripture was 1st Corinthians, Chapter 13. This is what she read:

If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.

If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.

It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing. For we know partially and we prophesy partially, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.

At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

I thought about this as I sat there watching them rehearse. I thought about it more during the wedding itself, and the reception party afterwards. If I don’t have romantic love, do I really have nothing? I have the love of my children, as was obvious throughout the weekend as they willingly did my bidding, even hugged me or patted my shoulder unsolicited. Greg patiently took my picture to update my online dating profile for my new and improved physique. Three friends called me during my drive. My extended family was there, in part, and I know that I am blessed with many kinds of love. I just lack that one, most important kind of love. But does that still mean I have nothing?

I gifted my nephew a Pampered Chef pizza stone and a card with four crisp $100 bills. Kevin about fell over when he finished wrapping the present and notating the card, carefully sliding the bills inside. When we visited my unemployed brother the next day, Kevin crept into the kitchen while I was in the process of hiding 10 $20 bills under the water pitcher on the counter.

“You’re giving John money, Mom?” he whispered. “You are so nice.”

I gave him all I had in my wallet, except for two twenties I kept for the drive back to Cincinnati, just in case.

I drove the entire way home from Chicago. Greg needed to read for school, Scott was simply too tired, and was wary of my criticism of his driving from Friday. About 20 miles outside of Indianapolis, we noticed dark, low hanging clouds off to the left a couple miles. The closer we got to Indy, the denser the dark clouds. We approached the source of the billowing plumes with some trepidation. Traffic slowed to a crawl. Off to the side, a landscape company’s logo appeared on the side of a metal barn, and smoke willowed out from a mulch pile close to the highway.

We rolled the windows up tight and plunged our car into the murky depths of the smoke infested road. I could see nothing. Nothing. I crept the car through the smoke, emerging in mere moments on the other side of the cloud, careening forth into the brightness of the evening as if nothing had happened.

“I wonder if that is like driving through hell.” I thought out loud.

“Mom, I don’t think that is even close to the equivalent of hell.” Greg replied disdainfully.

Still. It was fire breathing smoke, from mountains of fertile matter.
Behind me, the smoke rose majestically, seeming to enjoy its few moments of fame. Colors swirled in the setting sun to the west, beaming bright red and yellow and orange, seemingly in competition with the colors chosen by the trees.

We drove on in silence, humbled a bit, by the precariousness of life and fire and timing.

This morning, still thinking about the scripture in the wedding, I pulled out my mother’s bible, the bible that has been handed down to the youngest daughter of the youngest daughter for seven generations. It is old and threadbare, the deaths, births and marriages of our entire family inscribed within its bindings. I looked up the verse. This is what it said:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become [as] sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have [the gift of] prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed [the poor], and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, [and] is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Charity never faileth: but whether [there be] prophecies, they shall fail; whether [there be] tongues, they shall cease; whether [there be] knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these [is] charity.

Charity or love is most important? Shoot, I have charity down pat. I can’t pick flowers because it seems selfish to my neighbors. I send $100 to a different charity every month. I leave money in the box at meeting every Sunday. I am generous with my staff, with both money and trust. I package up canned goods for the Free store. My practice is devoted to the nonprofit segment of business. I consider myself a wealthy person when it comes to charity.

So, why this empty feeling? I’ve been pondering this question all day.
I googled the fire we passed on our way home yesterday. According to the Indianapolis Star, the fire was started as a result of spontaneous combustion. The windy day fanned the flames and poof! I eyed my mulch pile suspiciously.

Sometimes, I feel like I will spontaneously combust, what with all the conflicting feelings and yearnings and passions flaring up and thrashing around in my pretty little head. I need to douse the flame by planting tulips, by painting my kitchen and pulling weeds. I need to love and care for my children while I still have them under my roof. To hell with romantic love. My heart is full of charity, which at this point in time, far exceeds any faith or hope I have for the other.

The Mother Diet

I started my diet on July 10, 2007, and for six weeks, I stopped cooking altogether. My boys were thrilled, not because they didn’t like my cooking, they do, but because my answer to fast food and eating out in restaurants became a constant “yes”. I had been advised by the folks at the Weight Management center to stay out of the kitchen, at least for the first few weeks, and so I did. I stayed out of the kitchen. I loved the extra time I had, the time I used to spend cooking, eating and cleaning up. Drinking a shake takes all of a minute, and that is when you stop to savor it. Zero prep time, and clean up by simply tossing the carton into the trash.

When school started, I began making breakfast for my sons. I rationalized that I was never hungry in the morning, so I wouldn’t be tempted to eat, which turned out to be absolutely true. I never so much as licked the cream cheese off my finger during that time. I made bacon and eggs, bagels and assorted toppings, sausage gravy and biscuits, waffles and maple syrup, French toast and ham, oatmeal and strawberry yogurt. Not one morning of cold cereal. I served them fresh fruit every morning. I hovered over them, clucked at them when they were rushed for time. Hugged them before they left.

I was concerned that because I wasn’t cooking them dinner at night anymore, they would feel less loved by me. To be honest, with my boys at the ages of 19, 17 and 12, I have never been the type of mother to get up early and make them breakfast. Oh, sure, I’d insist that they eat a bowl of cereal in the morning, or I’d take Kevin out for a donut or two on the way to school, but a hot breakfast was something they only knew about on weekends.

I have discovered, over the course of the last two months, that I don’t make breakfast for the boys. I make breakfast so that my boys feel their mother’s love, their mother’s caring for them, their mother’s concern for their welfare. I make breakfast for my mother’s heart.

This breakfast making care has spilled over into other areas of their lives. I have found myself thinking about them more during the day, being more conscientious about their appointments, their homework, their whereabouts. I am not a worrier, wasn’t born with the gene, but I find myself calling them to chide them for not keeping me posted on their activities, to ask them about their day, to update them on my day, my plans, my estimated time of arrival home.

Is it possible that going on a diet has made me a better mother?

I've lost 40 pounds, but I've gained so much more....