November Book Report: A Place to Hang the Moon

This gem of a book came my way via Bas Bleu, one of my favorite sources for the sorts of stories I love the most.  Set in WW2 London, it’s the story of three siblings:  Will, Edmond, and Anna.  As the novel opens, the three find themselves well and truly orphans as their elderly grandmother has passed away and there is no family remaining to care for them. Though they have resources, the lack of guardian is a problem as the oldest child, Will, is only 12.  He’s an amazing and thoughtful big brother but, like his brother and sister, he wants a family to care for him.  As the three express it, they long for parents who “think they hung the moon.” 

The family solicitor hits upon a plan of sorts: the children will join a group of evacuees departing London for the safety of the countryside.  There, he hopes, they will find a home where they may stay after the war is over.  The children are in on the plan, though it’s being kept secret from everyone else, and they set off with a group of evacuees.  The first home in which they are placed shows promise - the parents are kind -  - but the brothers in the home are not welcoming.  Relations are tense and then an incident sets up conflict and the children are forced to seek another host.  The second home is no improvement at all and is even worse in many ways: the children are cold and hungry.  Comfort of sorts is found in the routines of school and actual happiness can be found at the town library, where the librarian, Mrs. Muller, proves to be welcoming and kind.  Each day after school, the children visit the library to read and find solace in books.  Privately, the children wish to ask Mrs. Muller to host them and Mrs. Muller seems willing……and well, I don’t want to ruin it for those of you who like a good story.  This one is splendid.  

It’s all set up for just the sort of happy ending I love best.  The story is well-written (the narrator is terrific) and the children are both wise beyond their years but still very much children.  I loved this book and it will live happily on the re-read shelves at my home.  

Four Weeks

After a glorious week off, classes resume this morning.  I love my job and all that it entails, so I’m not sad to return to work.  I spent a great deal of my time off resting my crummy hip and it was a happy thing that I could string together a few hours without pain nearly every day.  School days aren’t like that for me and I’m staring down the abyss of busy, painful days.  That’s hard to embrace, though teaching is a very good distraction from my discomfort. 

At the end of this 4 week stretch, I’ll have two weeks off.  That will end on January 5, the same day that I will see the orthopedist for a re-evaluation and - fingers crossed - move toward scheduling the surgery that will signal the beginning of the end to this nightmare.  As I face the next weeks, I will keep my eye on that prize and do everything I can to be the recipient of good news on January 5.  I struggle with the fact that because I am fat, I have to *earn* the medical treatment that will restore my mobility and stop this pain, but that is a story for another day.

Cooking Journal: Thanksgiving Supper

Normally, I post a Cooking Journal reflection on the 20th of the month.  But I am behind with everything these days, and this blog is no exception.  I figured a few days late with a Thanksgiving supper post was perfectly acceptable and so here we are.  I am deeply enmeshed in food restriction these days, looking to achieve the arbitrary BMI number that will get me the new hip I so desperately need.  I took a break from that on Thanksgiving and allowed myself to eat for the day.  

So it was that JT and I had a delicious Thanksgiving supper.

There was turkey and a potato casserole (neither of us loves mashed potatoes).  I roasted Brussels sprouts and made a posh cheese tray.  There was homemade cranberry sauce and  hot yeast rolls with butter.  We had pumpkin pie for dessert - JT loves pumpkin pie and I’ve also been known to enjoy a slice or two.  Mostly, we enjoyed the day and felt gratitude for the time off this week, the company of one another, and the happy home that we share.    

In Which the Indignities Pile Up, part 2

The first time I ever liked my body was when I was pregnant with JT.  The pregnancy and delivery of a baby I had grown inside me were life-changing in so many ways, especially in terms of my relationship with my body.  I could make human life and my attitude toward myself slowly began to shift.  I wasn’t skinny - and never will be - but I felt strong and able.  I began to work out in earnest - not to lose weight but because I liked the way it made me feel strong.  In the years since JT’s birth, I’ve gained and lost weight but never deliberately.  Once I learned that dieting was a one-way ticket to formidable and overwhelming self-loathing, I rejected the practice.  My dysmorphia never went away but could be avoided by not looking in the mirror or joining pictures.  I learned to wear the clothes I wanted to wear because they felt good and because the fat-girl rule of “choosing something flattering” seemed stupid and constricting.  Since pregnancy, I haven’t weighed myself because that number on the scale would destabilize the whole house of cards that was my sense of self.  My outward confidence was unshakable.  Internally, I was sometimes less confident.  So I avoided triggers that brought on self-loathing: dieting and a scale were out; intuitive eating was in.  Deliberate and specific food restriction were out; eating what I craved and what tasted good was in.  Seeing any doctor was risky because weight would inevitably come up and no setting was safe.  I once had a dermatologist tell me that my skin cancer risk was higher because of my weight.  She said it in a disgusted tone that caused the resident to come back in and apologize to me after the doctor left.  By then, I was a sobbing mess and the resident handed me a tissue, patted me awkwardly on the shoulder and recommended a different dermatologist, one who understood the science (being overweight does not cause skin cancer!).  I found a decent gynecologist and got regular pap smears and used a convenient clinic for the occasional sinus infection.  When arthritis in my knees required gel shots, I sought an orthopedist.  Treatment came only after a stern lecture about my excessive weight.  But the treatment was successful and enabled me to return to a busy life of movement, so fuck that doctor became my attitude.  

Then my hip failed me in spectacular fashion.  I *knew* that no orthopedist would help and, true to form, the first three I saw told me I needed a new hip and then refused me surgery.  One refused until I could meet a BMI target; one refused until I lost weight but promised surgery in 1-10 years if I lost an unspecified amount of weight.  One rejected me with no expectation of surgery or explanation but weight was of course the reason.  That there is loads of research reporting on successful hip replacement for high BMI folks doesn't seem to matter.  All of this feels like my fat self and the life I've built don’t matter.  So it is that my confident self has landed squarely in territory that I know to be dangerous for me: I must restrict food to lose weight in order to receive the medical treatment that I desperately need.  Each day that I am denied what will be life-saving and life-altering surgery is a day I live in pain with a side-serving of self-loathing.  At work, many people have offered commentary - mostly along the lines of “I hear that when folks get a new hip they are so sorry they waited “ - as if to urge me to take action.  At first, I smiled and nodded.  But as the commentary continued, I’ve found that honest talk shuts that shit down.  So I tell people who make that comment,“I’m too fat to get a new hip and I’m working on fixing that so I can have a hip.  But thank you for caring.”  It shuts people up - and embarrasses at least some of them.  But it is both galling and humiliating to be in the position; an open acknowledgement that I matter less because I am fat.  I’m hopeful this story has an eventual happy ending.  Thanks to a ridiculous amount of food restriction, I am on-target to meet the BMI requirement one orthopedist set.  I will see that doctor in January and part of me is hopeful; most of me is convinced that he’ll refuse the surgery and set another BMI goal.  But I am doing everything I possible can to get a hip and to prove that I matter.  When this is all over I hope I can laugh about it.  Right now, I just feel incredibly angry and humiliated, like the 5th grader who was once told she was too pretty to be fat.  Now I know that I can be as pretty as I like while I am too fat to matter.  It’s not much comfort.

In Which the Indignities Pile Up, part 1

I’ve been fat for most of my life, at least since the third grade.  For the same amount of time, I would avoid that word: fat.  It felt pejorative and mean.  Knowing how society feels about fat people, I steered clear of it.  Chubby, curvy, chunky….I could live with those words.  But fat - and any discussion of weight or words like overweight and obese - were off-limits. My aversion started in the 5th grade, when the pediatrician explained to me that I was “too pretty to be fat.”  At the time, I was just over 5 feet tall and 110 pounds - taller and more solid than most of my classmates - and I was already horribly aware of how my bigger body was received in the world.  I was a quirky kid who l loved to read and swim and ride her bike.  I struggled to make school friends….girls in fifth and sixth grade did not like the same things I did and so I was an outsider.  I liked food and probably ate too much of it.  I can say with confidence that school lunches were not helpful; neither was my time spent as a latch key kid.  My mother had some weird food limitations habits - she was forever dieting - and that didn’t help my sense of self worth or teach me to eat only when I was hungry.  In  my family, food was restricted in all sorts of ways and so those arbitrary rules governed eating for as long as I can remember.  But it was the way my body was received by others that was most alarming and from 5th grade onward I quietly embraced the message that I was fat and therefore deserved the second class status that fatness demanded.  In Junior High and High School, I secretly restricted food.  For a good long time, I was 5’3” and weighed 125 pounds.  I still felt fat, ungainly, and unworthy.  

My inner shame was often stifled by my outer confidence.  I was - and am - well-spoken and confident of my smarts.  I rode that ability into high school Forensics championships and admission to UCLA.  

In college, I learned to embrace myself while cloaking my feelings about my weight.  I did gain some weight and worked mighty hard to get rid of it by throwing up, a trick I learned in 7th grade and really embraced in college.  I was never slender —— that was just not in the cards —— but I did learn to live in my large body and side-step the dysmorphia I experience toward it.  I worked with counselors on and off in college and grad school and I found my coping tools.  I never liked my body and I often cloaked myself in clothing to hide my appearance.  I also made damn sure that *no one* knew how I really felt about myself, adopting a “fake it ’til you make it” approach to fat self-esteem while never, ever using the word fat or acknowledging my feelings about my weight to anyone but myself.  That’s been one of the hardest parts of the challenge with my hip - the fact that I am suffering because I am fat cannot be denied or hidden away.  But that’s a story for another day.

Gratitude Journal: Christmas Cactus

I cling to my daily gratitude practice like the lifeline it is while I live with my painful hip and the food restriction said hip requires.  There is a hand-lettered note on my nightstand reminding me to find grace.  At the end of each day, I meditate and identify that grace.  

Pain and anxiety about my hip are my constant companion and some days, grace feels like a mighty small antidote.  But I cling to it….it’s not small unless I make it small.  Lately, a daily measure of grace can be found in my Christmas cactus.  A pretty little plant is growing from the two stalks I took from my dad’s enormous cactus.  My plant got its start in February, after my dad’s passing.  When I see it, I am reminded of him.  That it is flourishing is a source of such comfort and joy to me, and I am grateful for it on a daily basis.

Disabling

My hip has grown worse in the past month and now I mostly get around with the aid of a cane.  Pain is my daily companion and pain relief is not effective.  Sleeping continues to be a significant challenge.  Though I am physically and mentally exhausted, I can rarely rest.  At night, I require narcotics to have shot at two hour windows of sleep, mostly managed when I sit up.  Being in constant pain has a way of fraying neatly all of my patience for myself and dimming my coping skills to a mere shadow of their former self. I’ve struggled mightily to be in good temper about the situation.  I cry on a daily basis.  

The only solution is a total hip replacement.  I’ve read volumes of medical research and by all accounts, a new hip will work and find me right as rain.  I’ve seen several surgeons but none are willing to operate until I lose weight.  Some are murky about the target; others use the discredited BMI standard.  Ultimately, I lack the emotional bandwidth to keep trying to find a surgeon who will operate now.  And so I’ve yielded to deliberate weight loss - dieting - as the avenue to relief.  It’s a dangerous road for me.  I am eating a daily calorie diet of 800-1200 calories; once a week I mix it up and approach 1800 calories.  A combination of self-loathing and pain seems to dim my appetite, so I’m not as hungry as I feared.  Food restriction has been made weirdly easier because of my long-standing body dysmorphia, a condition that fills me with self-loathing.   For many years, I have managed the worst side effects of dysmorphia by using body positivity and intuitive eating.  Neither of those tools are available to me while I restrict food to reach an arbitrary BMI standard.  Most doctors know that BMI is bullshit and, rather than defend it, they use the insurance companies as their excuse.  In some ways, that’s neither here nor there as I am now stuck: forced to restrict food and contend with a dysmorphia that is in full command.  I assume that everyone who sees me is filled with loathing for my body, as I am.  Though I do my best to compartmentalize that sentiment, it’s still in command more than I would like, as I knew would be the case once I started restricting food.  I put on a brave face for everyone but my son and my sister; both have been incredibly good to me.  My sister is both a kind and patient advocate as I lose weight while gripping tightly to the shards of my sanity. She’ll come East to help when I have the surgery and is basically a candidate for sainthood for dealing with my bullshit.  The only good news in this fucked up situation is that food restriction is working. I am close to the BMI goal for surgery set by one of the surgeons.  I hope like hell he'll stick to that proposal because in this strange race to exchange one crippling disability for another, I'm at risk for losing it all together.

Style Journal: Soft Nightgowns

As the weather begins to cool, my need for cozy nightwear grows.  In keeping with my preference to never wear pants, I am not the pajama type.  But I love a nightgown.  When I was a little girl, my grandma would give me a Lanz flannel nightgown for Christmas.  They had ruffles and pretty prints and I loved them.  Though I still have a soft spot for flannel, the idea of sleeping in flannel makes me sweat.  These days, I love Lands End long-sleeved cotton nightgowns.  They are soft and cozy, and each year has at least a few prints that I like.  I especially like small prints and my current favorite has all the trappings of a cozy morning.  

The nightgowns wash like a dream.  Just the thought of putting mine on at the end of a busy day makes me happy.  Here’s to feeling cozy.

One Year

It’s been one year to-the-date since T left.  In all fairness, it should not be expressed in that way — she left in anger on the 6th of November but in the clear light of the next day, it was the right decision for both of us.  On that day, our break-up became mutual.  I thought so at the time; one year later, a lot has changed but not my feeling that our relationship had reached its end.  I have missed her and, perhaps even more than that, I’ve worried about her.  In January, when I finally tried to convey that sentiment to her, I was firmly rebuffed.  We’ve had no contact since those terse texts.  In that exchange, I offered to talk and apologized for not being able to love her in the way that she needed.  She thanked me but had no other response; no apology or expression toward me of any sort.  That was it.  So our relationship of 11 years ended in a whimper. 

I’ve since had plenty of time to reflect on our years together.  But it’s a one-sided story and I’ve little idea how she thinks of our time together.  I’ve wondered - often - if she ever loved me.  I think that reflection comes from the hardships of the pandemic and our last year together.  I hope that’s true; there was a period when I was deeply in love with her and I thought she felt the same way.  I can only speak for myself, but as I think back on our last few years together, it feels that I spent an inordinate amount of my energy trying to manage her mercurial moods and inexplicable anger; to look after her in the way that she needed.  I recognize that my efforts failed, but I did try.  When things between us were at their most difficult, I would console myself with the notion that when I really needed her, she would be there for me.  I don’t know if I believed that as much as I hoped it would true.  But if the Summer of 2022 revealed anything to me, it was the falseness of that hope.  And by the time of her blow up in November - on my birthday, of all days -  I was simply spent.  The next few weeks brought me a strange sense of peace, followed by a whole lot of regret.  Now, a year later, peace is the more dominant sentiment.  Of course it’s tinged with regret; 11 years together is a long time.  I am not yet accustomed to thinking about my long-term future without a whole lot of uncertainty, a feeling that makes me anxious.  

In the last year, I have had the time - and space - to actually look after myself, an art I mostly lost in the blur of our last few years together.  I am not lonely on my own, though I’m a little scared of growing old by myself and being a burden on JT.  I’m sad; really, really sad that I could never find someone to love me as I am.  This is the second time a relationship that I believed was my forever life plan has failed.  Though the differences in my reactions are telling, in the harder moments, this second failure makes me believe that there is something gravely wrong with me.  Those feelings can run rampant far too easily.  So mostly I square my chin, dismiss these feelings of inadequacy, and remind myself of my better qualities.  I’m kind and funny; loyal and true.  Amazing, smart, and worthy.  Stylish and charming.  Beautiful.  And certainly deserving of better than I was receiving in the life I had with T.  One year out, I don’t know if I entirely believe these things, but I want to believe them.  That has to count for something.  

Among the Trees: The Bare Branch Season

There comes a point in November - we aren’t quite there yet, but I can sense it in the air - when suddenly, all the leaves are gone.  I’ll notice it first on my drive home from school.  Then I’ll see it at twilight from the living room.  It’s a hard transition for me.  Though I know that the stark Winter season of rest is the only way for the re-birth of Spring, I’m never quite ready to say goodbye to the fully-leafed trees.  This year, Winter is harder to embrace because of my current mobility limits, which are made harder by the cold.  Usually, the twinkling lights of December will help me to embrace Winter.  I’m hopeful that will be the case this year as well.  

November 1: All Inside Now

We’ve had a mostly warm Fall and plenty of time on the back deck and front porch.  Last weekend, Saturday was sunny and warm but Sunday was rainy and cool, with cold temperatures forecast for the week.  It was time for my houseplants to come inside for the Winter.  

That’s no small task and given my current physical challenges, I recruited JT to help with the job.  I gave some plants a haircut and he brought the plants inside.  The big shefflura and two pothos got a spot in my study.  Most got a perch near the south-facing living room window.  

Two more are making their home in the dining room alongside some of the plants that live indoors in all seasons.  These plants are my pride and joy.  They ensure that my house feels like a home and they make me smile all the time, but especially in the darkest portions of Winter, when they brighten the surroundings and remind me that warmer days will be here soon.