My Body or My Life

A long long time ago, I noticed I was getting fat.  I mean, a LONG time ago.  This is a story of something I did once…. when I noticed that I was getting fat.

 Not so’s you’d notice it or anything. Just a little thick around the middle.  I started buying loose clothes, not a size bigger, but with elastic waistbands or no waists at all, long skirts and big sweaters. I wore a lot of black. I looked good in black.  I did not look good in a bathing suit.  Or sleeveless dresses.  Or jeans. I looked – in a word – fat.

 This caused me much unhappiness. I had never been fat before in my life.  In high school, I was actually too skinny. My hipbones jutted out. I liked being skinny.

 I hated being fat. It was harder to shop for clothes, I felt guilty when I ate, and I was filled with self-loathing every time I got dressed or undressed.

 I wanted to be skinny again. I wanted the confidence that comes with knowing men are ogling your butt, women secretly hate you, and your mother thinks you are too thin.  But to get even close to that meant losing at least twenty pounds and firming up parts of my body that I hadn’t looked at in a long time.  Creating such a body would take grit and determination. Frankly, I have neither.

 I hired a trainer named Debbie, who is blond and perky, and she showed up with a bag of sports equipment and a clipboard.  “What’s our goal here?” she asked me.

 “I wanna be skinny.”

 “That’s it?  Just skinny?”  She took out a pair of calipers and pinched at me. “Well, there’s only one way to do that.”  Pinching my underarm flab, she steered me onto the scales. At 5”7 I weighed 151 pounds.  This is more than my high school boyfriend weighed in tenth grade. My body fat calculated out at 27 percent, about the same as liverwurst. 

 I told her I have a hard time dieting and   poked myself in the belly a few times.  Then I looked at myself sideways in the mirror. If  sucked in my stomach and held it, I didn’t look so bad.

 “You know you need?” she said. Debbie, on the other hand, has no fat whatsoever on any part of her body.  You could bounce a dime off her stomach. “You need a measurable goal.  Have you ever thought about competing in a body-building contest?”

 To my credit, I didn’t bust out laughing.  She asked as though it were a perfectly reasonable thing to do ask, when in my opinion, she might as well have asked me what I thought my chances were for the Pulitzer this year.

 I had visions of sweaty, broad-shouldered women hoisting 220-pound barbells over their heads while crowds hooted at them. I didn’t want bulging muscles and hair growing out of my forehead.  I just wanted to be skinny.

 She had to explain the difference between weight-lifting and body-building.  They’re two completely different sports.  Body-builders are more interested in the beauty and symmetry of their bodies than in how much muscle they can sport.  Body-building is making your body taut and strong.  They build muscles evenly all over their bodies, and then they diet down so there is little or no fat to hide what they’ve worked so hard to develop.  Weight-lifters, however, care only about how much mass they can heave up over their heads, and as you may know, many of them do not have particularly attractive bodies.

 “You don’t have to enter,” she explained. “But you can set the date as a goal, and then we’d have some parameters.  And body-builders,”  she added, “are skinny.”  

 It was her delivery, I guess.  It all seemed so, well, reasonable.  So I said ok.  And she said there was a competition in March.  This was October.

 It’s not as much work as you think, she told me.  It’s mostly diet and exercise:  70 percent diet, 20 percent cardiovascular exercise, and only 10 percent lifting weights.  This sounded do-able to me.  The diet part was going to be hard, but I like cardiovascular exercise.  I used to run marathons.

 So the first thing she does is tell me I can’t run.  My body is too used to it. I have to do something different, challenge my body, exercise muscles I’ve been ignoring. The Stairmaster, for example. She wrote that down on a little card she had snapped to her clipboard.

 I was still thinking about the competition itself. I already regretted having told her I’d think about it, and I most certainly did not intend to wear one of those stupid little bathing suits. Debbie was rolling out barbells and talking about diet, but I was thinking, “Wait a minute. I can’t run? I love running.”

 “Protein,” she announced.  “No carbs. Lots of water.” 

 Here’s a list of things I couldn’t have:  bread, pasta, egg yolks, milk, butter, cheese, sugar, fruit, carrots, salad dressing, salt, egg yolks, red meat, bagels, muffins. French fries.  There’s lots more. “In fact,” she laughed, “just think, ‘Chicken and broccoli.’ You can have all the chicken and broccoli you want.”

 But no wine.

 I nearly walked out.  Alcohol inhibits the body’s ability to burn fat, not to mention the peanut butter and Bacos binges at 3 in the morning.  “You can have decaf coffee – black – and diet soda. Iced tea.”  She was chipper.  She curled a 30 pound dumbbell with her right arm and the muscles popped out.  I realized that I was glaring at her and thinking bad thoughts.

 She sent me off with the workout card and a notebook.  I was supposed to eat four to six meals a day.  The body is like a fire, she explained.  If you throw on one big log, the fire will almost go out before it manages to catch and burn the log.  But if you throw on bunches of kindling, the fire is bright and burns quickly.

 This is great in theory, but actually eating six meals a day is time-consuming. You’re either eating, or preparing food, or cleaning up, or shopping for food, or thinking about it, all day long.  Debbie told me that I can mix up a protein shake in lieu of a meal when I am in a hurry.  I won’t be hungry. Water is filling, too.  I have to drink about a gallon or two a day.

 The workout schedule is demanding: forty-five minutes to an hour of cardio every day, plus an hour or more of lifting.  Debbie suggested I spend two to three hours a day in the gym.  This is hilarious. I have a job, plus I write freelance, run a household, raise a child, and try to have a little fun once in a while.  Something would have to give.

 But not drinking or eating real food freed up a lot more time than I gave it credit for.  I was  bright-eyed and bushy-tailed late into the night because I was always and forever sober, and I wasn’t wasting time at Happy Hours after work or late-night lollygagging over a scrumptious meal in a dimly lit restaurant. Frankly, I had more time, not less.

 I was up and eating my breakfast of black coffee, cream of rice, and fried egg whites by 6AM, out of the house by 6:45, and at the office, charged up and already productive by 7:30.  I drank bottles of water and protein drink, snacked on canned tuna, and practiced isometric ab exercises at my desk.  At night, I hurried home for my fourth or fifth meal of the day, changed clothes and hit the gym.  I did an hour on the Stairmaster, twenty minutes of ab exercises, lifted, stretched, and did push-ups until closing.  I was averaging about two hours a day in the gym. I went late because I wasn’t supposed to eat after 6, and if I was at the gym, I wasn’t eating.  At home, I got bored. I ate.  I tottered home around 9:30 and went to bed.

 About two months into this, I started to get mean. Sometimes I’d get mad at a chef because there was nothing on the menu that didn’t have oil or butter in it. Sometimes I’d get mad at my friends who were walking around FAT and they looked perfectly happy, fat.  But mostly, I was mad at things like air and Teflon.  No rhyme nor reason to it.  I was jealous of gym rats and trainers because working out was their whole life.  They weren’t giving up anything to look the way they did.  They loved dieting and working out.  It would be like if I could lose weight and get fit by drinking champagne, eating croissants, and reading best-sellers.

 At Thanksgiving I had dinner with friends. The hostess brought out a splendid, steaming turkey and all the fixings, and I realized that there was nothing on the table that I could eat. She’d left the skin on the turkey and it was oozing with fat and juices.  Everything else was cooked with butter and brown sugar and cream and bread crumbs and sherry wine and salt and egg yolks and cheese and God only knows what else. They served champagne, too.  My favorite.

 I snuck out into the kitchen with a slice of breast meat and pressed it between two paper towels to get the fat off. I came back with a glass of ice water.  Then I picked some broccoli out of the vegetable platter.  It didn’t help that everyone said, “Ah, go on. Have some stuffing and gravy and buttered yams. It’s Thanksgiving!”

 You don’t realize how much fat and carbohydrates we eat until you spend a couple of sessions with Debbie talking about nutrition.  Learning how the body works takes a lot of the fun out of eating, believe me.  Things I had always considered good for me were loaded with surprises: fruit contains an amazing amount of sugar; fruit juice is almost pure sugar. Margarine isn’t any better for you than real butter. Adults don’t need milk; our bodies have a hard time processing dairy products.  Egg yolks are cholesterol bombs. Eating became more than a dining experience.

It was as if I had slipped into another dimension. Everything held danger and temptation. I peeked under sandwich bread, and sniffed my salads.  Did that have oil in it?  I  taste cheese in this.  What time does the gym close? And since none of my friends were obsessed with working out like I was, I was lonely.  I was mean, and I was lonely.

But I looked great.  After a discouraging 3 or 4 weeks where I ate nothing but chicken, broccoli, yams and egg whites and didn’t lose a pound, I suddenly lost weight.   My stomach flattened out, my arms bulked up, my skin glowed. Debbie upped my weights, I worked out twice as hard, concentrated on my abs, which I hated, and my workout sessions stretched out into three hours.

By January, I had lost 10 pounds; by February, 15 pounds. I flexed my arms and watched the veins stick out. I bought new clothes, posturing and admiring myself in the mirrors.  I strolled through the grocery store catching glimpses of myself in the freezer case. Not only was I mean and lonely, I was conceited.

And boring. I told everyone about what I had learned about nutrition.  I poked at people’s abdomens and explained about body fat.  I went on and on about the benefits of drinking water and the havoc alcohol wreaks on our bodies.  People, even my dearest friends, began to shrink from me.

Or I imagined they were shrinking from me.  The lack of carbohydrates also made me a little paranoid.  “You should have a little sugar now and again,” said Debbie. “This diet over an extended period of time could make you a little moody.”  No kidding.

By this time I was glad Debbie had talked me into the body-building show because I had a goal.  I was going to hone this body into a work of art, and I was going to haul it up on stage, and people were going to judge it.  I would get graded on my work.  As a grown-up, you seldom get graded, really.  You have to rely on self-satisfaction which really never worked for me.  I like reward, I like applause, and an auditorium full of people would be clapping and hooting and hollering and maybe I would get a trophy for all my hard work. I mean, I never expected to WIN or anything. …

Something had snapped.  I was actually looking forward to the show. I was getting excited.  I invited everyone I knew to come, and I planned a big celebration afterwards. Two weeks before the show, I was obsessed with my body. I tanned it, I exercised it, I rubbed moisturizer into it.  I looked at it in the mirror a hundred times a day.  Except for the gym, I never went out for fear of being tempted to eat something poisonous like a dinner roll or a pretzel. I drink distilled water and gave up eating canned foods to avoid sodium which would cause my body to bloat.  At night, I jacked up the stereo to about a billion decibels and practiced my routine, prancing around my house in a bikini. 

The night of the show, I was so pumped up with adrenaline, I imagined I could actually see my heart beating against my rib cage.  This wouldn’t have been too farfetched, as I had lost 23 pounds and there was hardly enough fat on my bones to qualify as real skin.  Muscles popped out like hard knots of rope; I was diesel, I was buff.  Hell, I was ripped. The music and the screams of the audience rushed through my chest like steam. I was light-headed and charged up.  When I walked out onto the darkened stage for my 90 seconds of fame, I had never felt so good about myself.  I was drowning in self-satisfaction.  Body-builders, like marathon runners and Ironman triathletes, are an incredibly small percentage of the world’s population, and I was one of them.  Damn, I felt good.

Afterwards, I entertained like a diva in her dressing room, and then I tossed on a size 6 dress (I have never worn a size 6. My ARM was a size six.) and went out to EAT.

I had a martini.  I had two.  Then I had escargot drenched in butter and I sopped up the butter with bread. I ate veal chops and baked potato with butter and sour cream. I had champagne and white wine and cognac with a slab of chocolate mouse cake for dessert.  The next morning, I met friends for bagels and cream cheese, and I poured salad dressing all over my salad at lunch.  I had a margarita.  With salt.  I skipped workouts.  I went straight to hell in a handbasket and within 3 weeks I gained back ten of the 23 pounds I had lost.  In six weeks, I had gained back 15.

But I was happy.  I had my life back.  I mean, sure, I looked great, but who was looking at me?   I got a trophy, which was real nice, but it didn’t buy me a new house or get my taxes done or seed my front lawn.  Guys turned around to look at me, but they didn’t rush over and ask me to run off with them to Fiji. Truly nothing changed.  It was a great experience. It showed me what I could do if I wanted to.  I learned things, I had fun.  Now I’d been there, done that.

There are women out there who are a size six or a size four naturally.  They can eat chocolate cake and pasta with cream sauce all the time, and still wear a halter top without arm flab squeezing out the arm holes.  But that’s not me.  Those women are not even my friends.  I think they should be hunted down and killed like animals. For me being a size six was a whole lot of work.

I still work out almost every day, and I watch my diet and alcohol consumption. According to any height/weight chart, I’m in pretty good shape even though I have gained back almost every pound I lost while training for the show. I occasionally dream about doing it again, but the pleasure of blowing off an occasional workout or having a slice of pizza or a darn beer once in a while is just too good.  I’ve got a bottle of decent champagne in the refrigerator and a long lazy Saturday planned this weekend. I’ll read a cheap novel and meet a couple of girlfriends for lunch.   Maybe I’ll go to gym, and maybe I won’t.  Maybe I’ll go to the movies and have popcorn and a couple of Twizzles.  What the hell.

 Life is good.

 I love to write.  Not only do I like the process of choosing the best words and putting them into an order that works —  a couple of short choppy sentences when some power is needed, those hard consonants to convey an ugly thought, onomatopoetic words that sound like song – but I also like the way words charge and bounce on the page, the lovely white space I create with short paragraphs, and those adorable little marks of punctuation.

 It’s sick, I know, but it makes me happy, no matter what I’m writing about — until I decided to do what little I could for the families whose sons and daughters were off fighting in Iraq: I decided to write an article about them.  “They also serve who only stand and wait.”  (Milton, On His Blindness)

 A mother myself, I thought about how hard it must be to know your child is in constant danger of being blown up by a roadside bomb or picked off by a sniper, that he or she could come home disfigured, disabled, blind, or permanently terrified.  How do these parents get through the day? 

 I wanted to honor them and the only way I knew how was to write about them, but what I hadn’t expected was the heartbreaking interviewing process.  The parents were proud, scared, patient, brave.  Braver than I could ever be.

 I could manage to get through an hour or so watching a mother’s lips tremble or tears form in her eyes, but when a man cried, I was toast.  After I took a few hasty notes, I’d stumble out to the car and weep.  If my 25-year-old son was in the house when I came home, I’d throw my arms around his waist and press my wet, snotty face into his T-shirt, declaring my limitless love and gratitude for his very existence. 

 The first time he was astonished to suddenly have his arms full of mom, but after while, I’d see him watching me through the front window as I tried to gather my wits about me before coming in the house.  Sometimes he’d come out and get me.  Other times, he would look up, register the red eyes, and say, “Another soldier interview, huh?”

 It was the hardest article I have ever written, but when the piece came out, it was, for me, a beautiful tribute to the men and women, fathers and mothers, whose lives are forever branded by an insufferable sadness; and I was proud. 

 Chapter One:  Yoga

I was lying on my back preparing for urdhva dhanurasana.  I had just positioned my hands alongside my head, or thereabouts, and was settling in for the push when I glanced up at the ceiling lights.

Shimmery rainbows circled each bulb like the ghostly rings around the moon before a snow.  I was marveling at them, postponing the backbend, when I realized that there was something slightly wrong with my depth perception, as though I had lost vision in one eye.

I closed my right eye, and the rainbows went away.

I closed my left eye, and the rainbows came back.

I decided I was imagining things and pushed up into my backbend. I was concentrating on straightening my arms, trying to squelch the feelings of envy and resentment toward the younger girls who were inching their feet closer to their hands, and those who had one slender leg in the air, and the ones who could rest on their forearms. I hated them.  That I could actually push myself up into a basic backbend was a hell of an accomplishment for me.  It took me years to get this far.  This line of thinking made me forget, momentarily, about the rainbow rings around the light bulbs.

Then I lowered down to the floor and looked up at the ceiling again.  The rainbows were still there, only they were foggy now.

I closed my eyes.  I had two more urdhva dhanurasanas to go.  Ihate backbends. I hate Camel, I hate Cobra; I hate Bow.  I really hate Bow. I hate Bow more than anything.

I took my own sweet time preparing for the second backbend, wiggling my hips into position, straightening my feet.  When I pushed up, the whole class was probably already up, been up for a while, but I do most of my yoga with my eyes closed. I am trying to find inner peace.  I cannot be distracted from my search for inner peace.

By the time we were ready for the third urdhva dhanurasana, I had forgotten about the rainbows.  I was thinking about breakfast pizza.

“Come gently to a seated position.”  Donna’s voice floated above our noses, coaxing us out of shavasana.  “And place your hands in prayer position at your heart.”  The room was sweetly quiet; I luxuriated in it, full of peace, and silent while the others lowed like cows. I listen to them Om.  I never Om, but I like it.  While they Om, I usually roll up my mat under my knees so I can make a quick get-away.  I know it is totally not in the spirit of yoga, but I want to be the first one out so I can get my iced coffee and breakfast pizza, and Morgan can take my money and square things away with me before everyone else gets to the coffee shop.  Then I can take my time and watch the others wait patiently, yoga-like, for their orders to be filled.

It was 10 o’clock on a Saturday morning and I had the entire day ahead of me with absolutely no obligations, no place to be, no time schedule, no errands to run, not even any books to return to the library.  But I couldn’t stay there.  Everyone else had places to go.  They came and got their lattes and their chai tea and cranberry muffins, and the women squealed when they saw other women they knew, the men drank their coffee while picking their sweaty T-shirts away from their wet chests,  and then within 15 minutes, they all grabbed their rolled-up mats and disappeared because they had someplace to go and something to do.

So I kind of pretended I did, too, and took my coffee in a to-go cup. 

The protestors on the bridge in Westport bothered me a lot.  I passed them every Saturday morning after yoga class.  They milled about on both sides of the road with their signs and sandwich boards calling for an end to the war in Iraq.  “Bring them home!” their signs demanded.  “Stop the killing!” their signs begged. “Honk if you want to end the war!”

I leaned on the horn and they held up their fingers in the peace sign and I started to cry.  What, was it the memory of Viet Nam?  Was it gratitude that Smith wasn’t there?  Was it the hopelessness of it all, knowing that their commitment to their protest, rain or shine, for nearly three years, wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans?

They were all over 50 at least, some over 80. In the sleet, the cold, the wind. No matter what.  One man wore a uniform splashed with medals.  His hair was grey and his posture was proud and military. He held a sign that said, “No more war!”  There were no young people there.  Never.

I should be there, too, I knew, instead of displaying myself in self-congratulatory postures hoping for inner peace. They were making a pitch for world peace.  I was selfish and I was ashamed of myself, but I never, during the years that the protestors showed up in sunshine and shitty weather on that bridge, did I ever show up and join them, hold up a sign, and tell the world that I hated the war in Iraq; and I did hate the war.  But apparently not enough to hold up a sign and make my position public.

I was very ashamed of myself.

At home, the gardens were aching for attention.  The hosta were bitten down to the quick by deer who  regularly strolled through the yard at dawn, and the forget-me-nots had made a mess of their space.  The forsythia had forced the lilacs to grow to gargantuan heights looking for sun, and poison ivy lurked under the quince, trying to hide from me.  I poured myself a glass of wine and walked the property with it, but I didn’t do any gardening.  I thought about  the protestors and my right eye.

The following Saturday, I dutifully reported to yoga class.   The year before I was determined to master the tripod headstand and I did.  I could lift up gracefully into that pose and remain there, peaceful and fulfilled like a real yogi.  This year, I was working on the handstand.

“Let’s all find a wall.”  Tracy stepped out of our way and clasped her hands to the front of her chest like an enthusiastic priest at communion.   People dragged their mats to the edges of the room.  I felt myself shrinking.  I knew other women could blossom into a handstand like ballerinas. Some of the men threw themselves up against the wall with purpose and courage, while others thrust their legs in the air hippo-like, sweating and failing two or three times before Tracy came and grabbed their ankles and shoved their feet against the wall.

I positioned myself dog-like and focused on where the floor met the wall.  I took long breaths and tried to center myself, whatever that means.   Then I shoved my legs up. I threw my legs up. Well, I threw my right leg up.  My left leg refused to follow.  Fuck, I thought, returning to my humbling down dog position. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. 

This is not a yoga-like attitude.  I closed my eyes.  Fuck, I thought.  No, I thought.  Breathe, I thought. Calm down. 

From somewhere, a peace grew. In the dark behind my eyes, I knew that both legs would go up and, magically, they did.  My heels met the wall and my arms, victorious, held strong.  I kept my eyes closed, luxuriating in success.

After a few seconds, I released onto my mat and folded into child’s pose.  Damn, I’m good.

Donna’s voice rang out like a bell.  “Let’s find our way onto our backs,” she said.

Urdhva dhanurasana.  I rolled over clumsily and spread my arms out in submission. Then I opened my eyes – and the rainbows glimmered around the ceiling lights again.  I closed my right eye: no rainbows.  I closed my left eye: rainbows.  This was not good.  I closed both eyes and directed my thoughts into my peaceful heart, where a small still voice said, “You are going blind.”

No, I’m not, I told my heart, and braced up into Bridge Pose.  I settled my hands by my head and breathed up into my first backbend.  I felt strong.  I counted to five.  OK, other girls were still up when I let myself down, but hey. 

Then I opened my eyes.  Now the room was full of fog.

I closed my right eye. No fog.  I closed my left eye.  Fog.  Fine. I was only going blind in my right eye.  I could hardly breathe.  “You are going blind,” said the small still voice, and I sat up straight to argue with myself.

Then everything went black. 

I was paralyzed.  I stared off into the dark until my sight returned, politely, as though it was just a teeny mistake, and, here, here’s your sight back. Sorry.

I rolled up my mat and picked my way through the crowded room to the door. 

The woman at the desk asked, “Are you all right?”

I stared at her.  “I don’t know, “ I told her.  “I lost my vision for a second or two.  I see rainbows.  Things get cloudy.”

She said nothing.   I said nothing, and then I turned around and left. No breakfast pizza. I wasn’t in the mood.

On the way home, my sight cleared.  The protesters were still on the bridge despite the weather, which was dull and wet.  This was year four of their protest.  Every Saturday from 10 to 11.  Rain or shine.  Snow, sleet.  You know.  Like the mailmen.

That day, the rain was light but steady.  No one had an umbrella, and I worried about their health.  Some of them were in their 80s.  I knew one of the women.  She was 93.  Why were there no young people there?  Whatever happened to the passion of the ‘60s? 

I shook my head and leaned on my horn.  They all raised their hands in the peace sign, an almost unconscious  reflex. 

Here was the passion of the ‘60s.  These were the kids of the 60’s, and the parents of the kids of the ‘60s, and the veterans who did not want to see any more young men and women die.  Here was the passion.

As usual, I was ashamed I was not there on the bridge with them.  Seeing those determined, committed, grey-haired men and women, I realized that back in the ‘60s, I had been just a convenient protester.  My  high school fiancé was caught in the draft and sent to Viet Nam in 1965. After a few months, out of nowhere, he sent me a first lieutenant’s uniform with my name on the breast pocket.  I don’t have any idea how he got that, but I wore it with a madras kerchief and Indian moccasins for a whole semester, telling those who asked (but hardly anyone did) that we had no business in Viet Nam; the boys should come home.  I traipsed across campus in my army uniform, attended fraternity parties and drank a lot of beer, gave flowers to passersby on Earth Day (the first one ever), read William Blake and Schopenhauer and Doris Lessing and thought myself quite the intellectual and courageous spirit, when I was anything but.  I was a young girl seeing the world from the safety of a college campus  (students were ineligible for the draft) and my gender of course – women were not drafted back then .  

When I got home, I called Dr. Steckle the optometrist, but I could not get an appointment for three months.   I would be completely blind by then.

My son Smith was on the deck sunning himself.  I came out and waved at him, respectful of his cell phone conversation.  I looked at him with my right eye only and he looked fuzzy around the edges.  I switched eyes. He was perfect.  I closed my left eye and he morphed into a blur.

Smith studied me warily.  He took the cell phone away from his ear.  “What,” he said to me.

“I’m going blind.”  I closed my right eye and he was crystal clear.  I considered this.

“I’ll call you back,” he said into the phone and rested it on his chest.  “You’re going blind?”

Both eyes open, I said,” I think I am.”  I sat down at the picnic table and took a much-needed breath of air.  A yoga breath.  “If I am upside down for a minute, when I get up, I see rainbows.  Today I lost my sight altogether for a few seconds. “  I folded my hands together and set them on my lap.  “Only in my right eye.”

Smith said, “Uh-huh.”

“I can’t get an appointment with Dr. Steckle for three months.”

My son has been unnaturally concerned about his health since he was a little boy.  I think I caused this by dismissing any and all complaints he has ever had.  “Oh, that’s nothing,” I would say when he cracked his head on the corner of the coffee table.  “It’s not even bleeding.”  I’d sweep him up from a tumble and kiss his face.  “All better!”  I’d announce.  “A rash? Just a little red patch.  It means nothing.”

Apparently, he never believed me. He has been making his own doctor and dentist appointments since he was 15.  As an adult, he has never missed a check-up.  I wonder sometimes if I was a bad mother, but if I was, the end result was a responsible man who took care of himself.  I guess.

That day, he looked at me sympathetically.  “I have an appointment with Dr. Steckle day after tomorrow.  You could take that. I can make another.”

His cell phone rumbled against his chest.  He glanced at it.  “Go ahead,” he said. “Call the doctor.  Make sure you’re all right.”

“Why do you have an appointment?  Is something wrong with your eyes?”  What had he been keeping from me?

He shook his head.  He looked at his cell phone again.  “I just wonder if all the time I spend at the computer screen might mean I should have glasses. You know, preventative.  This can wait.  Yours can’t.”

What did I do to deserve such a child?

I went in and got a glass of wine.