AtypicallyRecovering

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In general, my folks were good people. They weren’t perfect, but they weren’t psychos by a long shot. My dad was a great dad, but when it came to appearances, I had to buck up. Mom was broken and tried her best. I think she did the best she could with what she had to work with in her life. Her mom was an orphan at age 6 because of the Flu Pandemic of 1917, and was distant with her kids. When my mom was 18 months old, she became a big sister, to an asthmatic baby, so she was the “good”, quiet one who learned that she was not as important in her mind. .

My mom and dad weren’t “mean” by nature. They’d lost 2 very newborn babies two years apart, from what was called hyaline membrane disease at the time. Each was born about a month early with placenta issues requiring emergency C-sections. The second one made it to day 6… 4 1/2 days longer than his late older brother, who didn’t even get a name on his birth certificate… just “baby boy’ and his footprints. They didn’t weigh him, either. Mom never saw either of them. He always had a name with my parents and me (and they are appropriately memorialized on the family tombstone). Anyway, a bit of a tangent, but I think it’s important to show compassion even when I was inadvertently given a life sentence regarding a severely wonky relationship with food. I don’t believe for a minute that they would intentionally hurt me.

I was adopted by them before I was 2 weeks old, after spending over a week in the hospital for “feeding problems”. Eventually, after a week in a large Chicago hospital, they got me to take some kind of formula, and I was cleared for placement in my folks’ home. They’d been through the loss of 2 babies just 3 and 5 years before they got me. They wanted me. Mom struggled, I think because she was afraid that I’d be taken away before the adoption was finalized. Dad was initially reluctant to adopt after the babies’ deaths, but said once I was there, he wanted a bunch of kids- he had a lot of fun. Mom said no.

My parents didn’t bat an eye when I would count out three thin slices of hard salami, one small-ish kosher dill pickle, and a cut up carrot, and take that with me to school as my complete lunch (I’d get a diet soda in the cafeteria). That added up to about 175 calories for an entire day. I rarely ate breakfast, and we’d (mom, dad, and I) would share a 15 oz can of ravioli, Hamburger Helper, or a box of mac & cheese- with the expectation that we’d have leftovers from the boxed meals. Mom bought that food.

Teachers at school noticed when I’d start to crater, but if they said anything that got back to my dad (principal at the school), I’d be told to always say I was “fine”. One English teacher, bless her, gave me a depression questionnaire, and took the results to my high school guidance counselor, who had been a neighbor at one time. I’d known him and his family since I was two years old. Dad was furious. I was allowed to drop physics, since I had 8 classes with Driver’s Ed, so no lunch break- and dad was fine with that. He demanded it so I could graduate a full year early. I did manage to bail after the first semester of my Senior year- and was so glad to be rid of that place. I hated high school, and thankfully don’t remember a lot of it. I remember names, and a bit more about people I saw away from school. But for the most part it’s a 3 1/2 year stain on my life aside from some people. I later contacted that English teacher after dad died, and told her that I remembered her kindness, and thanked her for trying to help me. She had been transferred to a different school after her ‘intervention’ with me- and I felt so guilty.

Food was an expense to dad. He had no concept of what made up normal eating, though his mom was a great cook and baker (from Sweden), and his father had gardens of organic veggies every year. He just knew that if something was filling and tasted good, that was enough. The nutritional aspect and how that relates to health wasn’t considered. He didn’t want to spend money on something he saw as a waste. Nutrition/malnutrition be damned.

They were both on constant diets. Dad’s ‘go-to’ was bananas and yogurt until his pants fit as he liked. Mom went to every ‘diet club’ and tried every stupid diet on the planet- Weight Watchers, Diet Workshop, cabbage soup, just cabbage with either soy sauce or taco seasoning on it, and dragged me along to one of those “fitness” places where they’d strap in to some contraption that made every last ass in that place look like a 3-D seismograph. It was appalling to a 8 year old. It’s still appalling when I remember those quaking asses.

Mom started to bribe me to lose weight when I was in 2nd grade (6-7 years old)… a buck for each pound, and then the schizoid large bag of CANDY for every 5 pounds. I wasn’t remotely overweight at that point. She wanted a ‘greyhound’ like skinny kids at church. I’m more of a golden retriever in my natural body type- not the one forced on it by a mom who was too terrified to have a kid with ‘defects’, presumably because she was afraid I’d be taken away. Later, in my teens, she’d weigh me before figure skating lessons, and if I didn’t weigh what she wanted me to weigh, she’d refuse to pay for lessons. Skating was my escape- so I’d run around the neighborhood to sweat off the weight. It was a recipe for a life of eating disorders. She was never as interested in me as she was when I was on a diet. She’d whip out her wallet so fast it was like time travel. Steak for the diet? No problem. Eating grapefruit and eggs for 2 weeks – no issue. Until I started to fall apart from starvation.

I didn’t look like I had eating issues. Nobody knew what was going on at home. Nobody knew that I needed to be rescued from her. Nobody knew that we were all malnourished in that house- and it would be decades before I learned of the Minnesota Starvation Study by Dr. Ancel Keyes (he later became a total douche with lies about saturated fat and heart disease…. there is NO link; he lied with his own research). That study explained everything about what lack of nutrition does to thinking. And I’ve been in that head space for over 55 years.

My folks were struggling with their own self-worth, and that was compounded by the grief over two newborns. Mom never seeing them was a travesty and fit with the view at the time that they weren’t gong to live, so don’t get attached (as if pregnancy hadn’t done that already). I was damaged by their views on food- but I don’t think it was malicious. It was very misguided, but I still think they were mostly good parents, and decent people.