Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault

by Cathy Guisewite

  Broken almonds must be eaten because they don’t count as full almonds.

  Over- and undersize ones must be eaten because they throw off calculations.

  Oddly shaped ones must be eaten so they don’t feel rejected.

  10:04:30: Nine perfectly matched almonds remain. Nine is nowhere near anyone’s version of a serving size, but seems appropriate for a much-deserved celebratory snack for all my effort. I scoop the nine almonds into my treat cup. Quickly seal the top of the cup with plastic wrap to prevent the almonds from accidentally spilling into my mouth on the long five-second walk back to my desk.

  10:05: Never mind.

  10:06: Sit at my desk. Glare at my empty treat cup. Check my stats on my Fitbit app: I’ve walked thirty-seven steps. Eaten approximately 1,100 calories. Burned seven calories. One hour, fifty-four minutes until lunch.

  At least I didn’t eat a donut.

  11.

  THE BUILD-A-BOOB WORKSHOP

  Yesterday, the Build-A-Bear Workshop.

  Today, the Build-A-Boob Workshop.

  How much can one mom take?

  “We were just there,” I say wistfully to my daughter, hoping she’ll turn and look where I’m pointing in the mall—two stores down and eleven years back in time. “You were staring through the Build-A-Bear window, begging for tiny pink outfits for a little teddy bear!”

  My daughter isn’t turning and looking.

  “Remember?” I say, smiling warmly, hoping to draw her back to the hundreds of precious hours we spent holding hands in this mall, browsing for dreams, negotiating her childhood. “Remember how you cried and cried when I wouldn’t buy that last little pink tutu for your bear because you didn’t make your bed all week?”

  She isn’t remembering, isn’t smiling, isn’t drawn back.

  She’s in a teen trance, staring through the extremely different store window in front of us at tiny pink outfits for extremely grown-up humans. This isn’t the first time we’ve been here, but it never, ever gets easier. I reach out to put a hand on her shoulder to remind her how deeply we’re still connected . . . but before my hand can land, my baby rushes away from me, through the store door, into the arms of a mostly naked mannequin.

  Come back! I silently scream after her. I’ll buy you the tutu for the bear! I’ll make your bed for you for the rest of your life! JUST STEP AWAY FROM THE HOT PINK PADDED PUSH-UP POWER BRA WITH MATCHING MAGENTA MICRO-THONG!!!

  I would be screaming out loud and hauling her to the exit except she’s nineteen. I can’t lift her. Also, there’s that preparing-to-be-deserted, pre-grieving-mom part of me that’s just so grateful to still be included in anything. Even if what she’s dreaming of decorating today is as far from a teddy bear as my mortified mom-brain can imagine.

  She wouldn’t have heard me anyway. She’s already turned from the mannequin and is under the spell of a Victoria’s Secret Sales Hottie. A Sales Hottie holding out a giant black mesh bag she wants to help my baby fill with “Cu-u-ute!” things more provocative than my wedding lingerie. Nothing, absolutely nothing, a mother can hold out at this point to compete with that.

  “What size boobs do you want?”

  The Sales Hottie doesn’t actually use those words, but that’s what she means.

  In this bustling fantasyland, one can turn perfectly nice, God-given As into sassy Cs. Lovely Bs can become dramatic Ds. The alphabet can go on and on . . .

  I look at my grown-up little girl gazing at the Sales Hottie with the same sparkly, believing eyes that used to gaze upon Snow White at Disneyland. I try to comprehend how this is happening. It isn’t just the shock that she grew up. It isn’t just the grief that the world lost its innocence and modesty right when my baby’s launching into her first fragile years of womanhood. It isn’t just the guilt that my generation of women is the first in history to have the freedom and resources to point our daughters in a whole new direction and that our daughters are choosing to rush en masse to sexy lingerie.

  Well, yes. Actually, it is sort of that last one. I have enough on me without also having to feel responsible for helping create the freedom for my little angel to think it’s a statement of self-worth to spend $70 on a bra that makes her look like the other kind of “angel,” the one in a lingerie catalog. All those years she curled up on my lap at bedtime, the thousands of times I whispered to her sweet, sleepy head as I kissed her good night that anything was possible . . . was I supposed to be more specific?

  I try to find a place to stand. Too close and I humiliate her. Too far away and I humiliate myself by appearing to be shopping for something for me. There’s absolutely no direction I can look without making eye contact with the fact that life as I knew it is over.

  The Hottie is pulling out enhancement choices, as if the only universal wish is for bigger. There isn’t one bra on display that doesn’t embellish someone’s size and make the shopper, at least subconsciously, feel that exactly who she is isn’t enough. This is not what my proud generation meant by a woman having more choices.

  The Hottie is demonstrating to my baby that she can not only pick what size and shape she’d like her womanhood to be, but exactly where on her chest she’d like to position it. This is not what we meant by options!

  The Hottie is showing her how to make her own powerful personal statement by changing the angle of the flirty straps in back so she can change the angle of the flirty situation in front—as though nothing my generation said about a woman not being defined and valued by the size of her cleavage got through. As though enough of a woman’s money and brainpower doesn’t already get wasted trying to get a guy’s attention.

  I shut my eyes for a minute to regroup. I try to erase the memory of all the money and brainpower I’ve wasted trying to get a guy’s attention. I try to eradicate all memory of all men.

  And yet who can stand here in this underwear emporium, surrounded by these sultry getups, and not think of men? Provocative scenarios start racing through my mind:

  What if men had a store full of the equivalent of padded push-up bras for their manhood and peer pressure from their entire generation to shop there? Hah.

  What if most of men’s clothes were designed for their manhood to peek out a little bit and men had to spend time each day recalculating which piece of their underwear wardrobe would reveal the appropriate amount of themselves to everyone at the office, PTA meetings, and church? Hah.

  What if a man with the equivalent of a God-given A bought lingerie that made him the illusion of a dramatic D, and then got to the part of the evening where he was supposed to take his clothes off???? HAH!

  “You look all sweaty, Mom,” my daughter says, glancing over from the Bombshell Bra—Adds Two Cup Sizes! she’s squishing between her fingers like Play-Doh.

  “Yes, well, I was just . . .” I start to answer, but never mind. She doesn’t want to hear my fantasies any more than I want to hear hers. We’re honoring the Mother-Daughter Code of Silence today. She knows it’s best not to share how excited she is to be shopping for Really Big Girl Underwear. I know I can’t share how mortified I am that she’s doing it or any of my opinions about the cultural collapse I believe the entire women’s underwear industry represents.

  Either truth would ruin what we have, which is this last little sliver of time on earth when she’s still young enough to want my approval almost as much as she wants my credit card. This sweet, aching time when she needs and wants me to give her permission to grow up.

  I’ve spent nineteen years arming my daughter with a sense of self-esteem built on the values of hard work, integrity, and kindness. I enshrined every good report card on the refrigerator door, recorded every heroic science fair effort. I wept at the dance recital when, after four years of trying, she was finally brave enough to tiptoe onto the stage. I showered her with praise the day she wrapped a favorite doll to give to a sick neighbor, cheered and cheered the day
she made the honor roll.

  The Sales Hottie has spent thirty seconds teaching her how to make her boobs double in size.

  My daughter likes the Hottie more than she likes me now. She’d go home with her if she could. The Hottie is not all awkward and weird like I vowed I wouldn’t be but still am. The Hottie feels no need to pair each bra with a speech about how women foster sexism with the mix’n’match messages they wear. She announces style numbers into her magic headset in a loud, nonconflicted voice, summons miracles from the secret back room, pulls non-God-given cleavage out of cute little drawers.

  I hate her.

  I try to peek around to see if there are any kindred spirits in the store, but I still don’t want to look as if I’m looking at anything, so I peek out the sides of my eyes without actually moving my eyes to the sides, which must make me appear even more insane than I feel. So often all I’m ever searching for at the mall is someone like me. Someone who matches me.

  ISN’T THERE ANYONE IN THIS STORE WHOSE INNER CONFLICT IS THE SAME SIZE AS MINE??! I fought for a universe in which women aren’t sexually repressed, but I didn’t mean THIS. I prayed my daughter would have a healthy body image, but I didn’t mean in THAT. I rally against . . .

  “Mom, will you come in the dressing room with me?”

  Everything stops.

  I’ve been invited into the Room.

  I turn toward my daughter and nod quickly, too moved to speak. I follow silently, winding past displays and, finally, through the Door. I watch the Sales Hottie take my little girl’s fantasies out of her giant black mesh bag and display them on the wall. I watch my daughter lock the door after the Hottie leaves and turn to me with a nervous smile.

  She wiggles into item number one and I instinctively reach to help. I look at my hands adjusting her lacy hot pink straps, and for a second I see my own mom’s hands—carefully sewing tiny loops in the shoulders of all my summer tops to save me from the embarrassment of someone accidentally seeing a tiny white bra strap. For another second, I’m back in a department store dressing room with Mom, way back when underwear was underwear, dying of embarrassment that my mother was even seeing me in a bra.

  Could life be any different now? I watch my baby fuss with the tiny hooks and bows. It isn’t just my blessing she wants. She needs me to help her fit. Literally, help her fit into a world that’s as far away as I can imagine from the one in which I grew up. A world that seems so much more complicated and scary now that my generation has freed hers from the repressive rules that were so clear and so safe.

  She turns to face the mirror.

  Our eyes meet in her reflection. Hers are all sparkly, just like when she saw Snow White at Disneyland. Mine are so full of so much, I can hardly see.

  All I can think is how much I wish we could go two doors down and build a bear.

  12.

  INFIDELITY

  I woke up with the exhilarating urge to cheat on my Fitbit fitness tracker.

  What if I sneak outside and start walking without wearing it on my wrist? I could walk anywhere and it won’t know. I could stop after an eighth of a mile, sit at an outdoor café with a 450-calorie cold-pressed mango smoothie, and watch YouTube videos for twenty minutes.

  It won’t note my slowed heart rate. It won’t obsessively calculate calories or track pounds gained or lost based on the “profile weight” I entered, which may or may not have resembled what my profile weighed the day I started. It won’t note anything because it won’t know.

  I stride out the front door. Scroll to the Fitbit app on my phone and laugh right into its little dashboard. “HAH! I am cheating on you today! I’m going for a walk without your tracking one thing about me. I left my wristband on the kitchen counter! I’m free!”

  My eyes flash, wide and triumphant.

  The wide, triumphant flash causes my left bifocal contact lens to dislodge. I blink to keep it in place, which makes both eyes get teary, which makes both lenses swivel. By the time all the blinking and swiveling is done, the bifocally part of the lenses is positioned better than before, and when I squint back at the screen I realize I’ve just delivered the whole life-affirming speech to my frozen yogurt loyalty app icon.

  No matter. I’m liberated. The first steps are giddy. I’m walking on my own two feet and no one’s keeping track.

  Block number two: I look around. Is anyone watching how I’m walking with no one watching me walk?

  Block three: I do a tentative little hand wave. Look at me! Nothing on my wrist! I’m walking without anyone watching me! Someone look at me!

  By block four, it’s all I can do not to scream out to complete strangers. LOOK! I’M CHEATING ON MY FITBIT WHILE MY FITBIT APP’S RIGHT HERE IN MY FANNY PACK! IT’S BOUNCING ALONG WITH EVERY STEP BUT IT DOESN’T KNOW IT BECAUSE I LEFT THE WRISTBAND AT HOME! IT WILL NEVER EVEN SUSPECT! LOOK AT ME!!

  Is it possible to experience anything in the twenty-first century without an audience? This is what I wonder in block number five.

  I stop to Google the question, hoping that if passersby aren’t amazed that I’m walking without tracking, they’ll at least give me credit for pausing for a runner’s cramp. Before I can click Google, I see a new message from Fitbit: “One step at a time! Get moving!”

  I sit on the curb.

  “Runner’s cramp!” I call toward six women in Tour de France spandex who streak past on skinny little bikes pretending they’re not impressed.

  “I have been moving!” I hiss to the iPhone screen. “I already walked five blocks!”

  Another message from Fitbit bings in. “Motivate your day!”

  “I don’t need motivating!” I hiss back. “I’ve been walking without telling you!”

  “Take a quick 250! Let’s go!”

  Now I am screaming out loud. “I WANT CREDIT FOR CHEATING ON YOU! I WANT CREDIT FOR CHEATING ON YOU!”

  I glance up. A woman pushing a stroller careens sharply to steer her baby to the non-me side of the street, her Chihuahua racing beside her too terrified to bark.

  “DON’T BE AFRAID!” I shake my phone in the air toward the frightened family. “I HAVE A CRAMP! I HAVE A CHEATING-ON-MY-TRACKER CRAMP!!”

  I look down the street. Even the cars have quit coming this direction. Waze must have sent out an alert that there’s a lunatic sitting on the curb.

  I’m all alone. At the end of block five. Zero witnesses. Zero accountability.

  One hundred percent unobserved, unsettling freedom.

  I try and fail to embrace my emancipation. With nobody watching, it seems so empty to go on. What’s the point if no one will know?

  I consider downloading a different app that tracks directly from the phone without a wristband and recording my walk from here . . . but I wouldn’t get credit for the five blocks I’ve already gone. I consider going home, putting on my Fitbit wristband, and starting all over, but even to me, who’s spent the last nine minutes of my workout sitting on a curb, starting over would feel like quitting.

  I think about the years ahead, with all the people and places changing and the likelihood that I’ll need to take many, many steps with zero possibility that anyone will care to record them. I think of the millions of things in life I’ve been afraid to try alone so far. I think of all the people who forge ahead on all kinds of dreams without a tracker, an app, or a support system.

  I feel a familiar wave of total inspiration and complete disgust.

  I turn my phone all the way off. Stand up. Boldly head toward block six. All by myself, but really by myself this time. I walk with a new commitment to own my own minutes, to do something just because I said I would. In this century of astounding, triumphant personal accomplishment, I am succeeding at this: putting one foot in front of the other without telling anyone else. Going down one little road by myself. Boldly, bravely, walking into the rest of my life.

  I feel a brand-
new happy rush of endorphins. I feel my heart wake up. No fitness tracker on earth could measure how far I’ve already come today.

  And now, rounding the corner by myself to block seven, I pause to give myself a nice little round of applause.

  13.

  NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR NICE CLEAN CLOSET

  She had the cool, worldly aura of someone who’d just traveled to the neighborhood Goodwill and dropped off eight garbage bags full of her life. The dewy glow of a Decision-Maker. I should have trusted my instincts and sneaked out the back door of the restaurant before my friend saw me waiting at the hostess stand. I could have called from the parking lot, said I was stuck in traffic and would have to reschedule lunch for another day when . . .

  Too late. I’m hugging her hello.

  “Hi!” we both chime. “You look wonderful!”

  I step back from the hug and scan my friend’s face for why she looks so much more wonderful than I do. What has she done to herself that she didn’t tell me she was going to do? Why the dewy glow? Surely she would have mentioned if she were planning . . .

  But the evidence is all over her.

  I look into her clear, sparkling eyes. I see unwrinkled blouses lined up by color on matching hangers.

  I look at her youthful smile. I see a neat stack of blue jeans that were the same size as her rear end when she got out of bed this morning.

  I catch a whiff of hibiscus, which I thought was perfume when we hugged, but which I now realize is the smell of fresh Bed Bath & Beyond shelf paper.

  I can’t believe it. Another girlfriend has sneaked off and done it without telling me: Botox of the closet. Storage-room peel. She’s given her entire home a deep cleanse and rejuvenating lift.

  I could have been so happy today, eating a peanut butter sandwich on Wonder Bread made with a leftover IHOP grape jelly pack from the bottom of my purse while leaning on my kitchen counter. Could have been with a friend who’s still like me: me.