Bite Sized
Fiona Hamilton
Jessica Kingsley Publishers
London and Philadelphia
Author’s Note
Bite Sized is a story from my experience, a personal story. It is not the whole story, but I hope this little book with its few words and plenty of space is enough.
My daughter has given permission for some of her experience to be included. One day she may decide to tell her own story; for now, she is engaged with other creative work. I hope that readers will respond in their own ways and not feel they need to ask for more.
The story is also ‘ours’. It is shared by many people. I have met some of them, and I know there are many others all over the world. People affected by eating disorders and by other mental health issues. People navigating the complexity of growing up, or caring for others. Perhaps you will find your own connection with the themes in a different way.
This book comes with a heartfelt thank you to my dear family and friends and to all the many who in different ways have been kind, bold, practical, funny, loving and prepared to learn, change, keep going, not judge, and stay alongside.
Bite Sized is also an offering to many people I don’t know, who share in the story in their own ways.
Fiona Hamilton
Foreword
by Philip Gross, author of The Wasting Game
There is a poet’s accuracy and tact in these short utterances that sometimes look so slight, so isolated in the white space of the page. The art is in the fact that we might scarcely think (till afterwards) that they are poetry. Any reader whose family has been through a similar experience will recognise the tentative, sometimes faltering, untidy truth of them.
I am one of those readers. Page after page brought back little shocks of memory – yes, I’ve been there – often in response to tiny details. But I suspect there are few readers who will not catch a resonance somewhere in their circles of family or friends. The dark wing that has brushed them might not be an eating disorder. Many kinds of addiction or obsession seep into the fabric of a family in this way; when this happens, no one is untouched, and all need care. To speak with clarity and sensitivity, in a language so free of the too-available response of guilt or blame, is in itself a kind of care.
This account is not a case history; it is not a family therapy session. This is one person using the disciplines of writing to set down their own journey through the new and suddenly strange landscape into which such an illness pitches the whole family. This writing does not put words into the daughter’s and anyone else’s mouth ... though those others might well feel enabled to speak for themselves through its example.
By speaking sparely, honestly and proffering no pat answers, Bite Sized offers anyone going though such challenges the chance to see their own experiences with new clarity – almost literally to inscribe them in the wide spaces on the page. At a key moment in the story, a consultant confides the uncomfortable truth that medical science does not have the answers to the problem. Rather than being dismayed, the mother is grateful, is braced by this humility and says ‘I trust her more / not less / for telling me / how little we know’. The way these pieces reach for provisional hope at the end is all the more moving for its not quite understanding where it comes from, or why the balance has tipped a little towards life. Meanwhile, as a working principle, we might share Fiona Hamilton’s humble apprehension here – that ‘love’ might be the place to begin.
Bite Sized
One day our daughter got anorexia
Of course, it wasn’t that simple
What I remember
is her standing by the window
with her back to me
crying
Was that the beginning?
I remember
she was the only one
who said she didn’t want an ice cream
in the half term holiday
a few weeks before
Was that the beginning?
I remember
her infectious giggles
climbing trees right to the top
sucking lemons
singing
That was before the beginning
Maybe the beginning was at primary school
when her best friends stopped being Best
or were only some days
- and she never knew which
Maybe it began with girls in the playground
comparing their weight
and one girl puffing up with pride:
I’m only four stone
Maybe it began singing solo
in the school concert I Walk Alone
applause that left a bitter taste
Maybe it began with a game
of piggyback rides with boys
that depended on lightness
Maybe it began with a lie
We can’t lift you
in the dance class
Maybe it began with a morsel
Maybe it began with a bite
Maybe it began with things being too much
Maybe it began with being fed up
Maybe it began with a gut feeling
Maybe it began with something
she couldn’t stomach
Maybe it began with a gene
Maybe it began long ago
Maybe it began with ashes on the tongue
Maybe it began with a lump in the throat
Maybe it began with ordinary sadness
Maybe it began with wanting something
to be beautifully, perfectly small
or so light it could float away
Our daughter started losing weight
invisibly
then visibly
I watched her eat
I asked her teachers to check she finished her lunch
They said She is, she’s having everything
just like everyone else
I took her to the doctor
The doctor asked some questions
plotted her weight on her baby chart
did blood tests
The blood test results came through
showing nothing
We went back to the doctor
who did more tests
and sent us home
It was dark
and cold
Christmas was coming
Midwinter:
a phone call in the evening
She’s probably got coeliac disease
She’ll need an investigation
It’ll have to be after the holiday weekend
Time was heavy
Our daughter grew lighter
We got through Saturday and Sunday
but Christmas morning was too much
This can’t be right
We carried her in a blanket to A&E
A windowless room
Our daughter on a bed
Tests
Nothing obvious
They sent us home
with build-up drinks
After Christmas she had an operation
to check her intestine
Was this it?
She has coeliac disease
She mustn’t eat gluten
They sent us home for the new school term
but she wasn’t well enough
to go to school
We brought her meals on a tray
clambering stairs like cumbersome giants
in a shrinking world
Her Dad and I cut up portions
offering bite sized helpings
elfin portions
and sips of water
as if from a thimble
in a desert
Each tiny portion
weighed a ton
It was backbreaking work
&n
bsp; like heaving stones
in sweltering midday sun
And then everything stopped
We were back in hospital
hearing the words
She’s got anorexia
Maybe that was the beginning
but it felt like the end
anorexia
What an ugly word
anorex rex rex rexia
It wrecks ya, it wrecks ya
anorexia
It means ‘loss of appetite’
which is odd
because anorexia
is the hungriest thing in the world
It can eat you alive
And when everything starts again
everything has changed
Our daughter has turned ferocious
she’s shouting and swearing
thrashing her arms and legs
with superhuman strength
I swear her eyes have changed
from blue
to cold granite grey
She is refusing to eat or drink anything
not even her saliva
she spits it out
into a plastic cup
over and over
spits it out
There is only one way to keep her alive
Brave girl, says a nurse
threading a tube down her nose
The tube is attached to a machine
that beeps and whirrs
pumping creamy liquid
into her stomach
I dab some from the bottle
onto my tongue
Our daughter gazes at the digital numbers
to calculate how much they are giving her
it has become vital for her to know
it’s the most important thing in her world
She keeps trying to pull the tube out
and pinch it closed
The pump is not going to work
so they abandon it
and pour the liquid down the tube
holding it up high to make use of gravity
The young nurse looks miserable
holding the plastic umbilicus
tethering her to my child
I wonder what she thinks of me
as I watch her struggle
to feed my child
Doctors come and go
asking questions
writing things down
Piles of magazines on the ward
scream headlines
about size zero celebrities
and clever ways to get rid of the kilos
Ballooning celebrities
Skinny celebrities
Lose a stone a month!
How I got back into shape super-quick
after my baby
My baby undernourished
My baby starving
My baby I can’t feed
Who else feels like me?
Early mornings dash to the hospital
regular as clockwork
in the cold dark
polite greetings
strangers watching over her
sleeping under a too-thin
hospital blanket
endless grey days
timetabled feeds
meals reduced to sickly liquids
poured through tubes
timed by the clock
measured out in mls
Voices in my head:
This doesn’t happen
to babies whose mothers
look after them well
and feed them
it doesn’t happen to babies
with mothers who love them
this doesn’t happen
it says in the books
everyone knows
this doesn’t happen
everyone knows
so what I did, I didn’t
oh, what did you do?
what did you?
what didn’t you do?
and what I knew
I don’t
and who I am
I am no more
Small acts of kindness
fall like rain in the desert
One nurse plays tunes on an accordion
Another brings a book of origami birds
Another lets our daughter try on his boots
which are far too big
Look! we say
You’re small and they are big
You’re small and they are big
Look!
But it isn’t about seeing
It’s about believing
and anorexia has taken her beliefs
and twisted them inside out
Minutes
and hours
and days
and weeks
and months
in hospital
Children with broken legs
Children who take their medicine
Children who arrive in wheelchairs
Children who smile at nurses
Children who get better
Children who come
Children who go
Our daughter stays
She shouts and swears at the nurses
She doesn’t want their help
She doesn’t want their medicine
She doesn’t want build-up drinks
She doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t
The doctor tells us
Your daughter has to go to a specialist unit
in a hospital 120 miles away
I can’t compute this
They are going to put 120 miles between us
They say I have to help her
but they are putting all those miles between us
At the far-away hospital
we are invited to a white-walled room
They ask us to draw a family tree
in coloured pens on big sheets of paper
while they watch
We aren’t sure why, so we draw in silence
Mum, Dad, son, older daughter
younger daughter
then the names
of aunts and uncles
cousins and second cousins
grandparents, close friends
people alive and dead
drawn on straggly waving branches
Our tree is quite big
but some of the people on it
have no idea what’s happening
This tree could come down in a storm, I think
and it has already been struck by lightning
Then the meeting is over
Thank you, they say
We’ll keep it safe
Someone rolls up our tree
and takes it away
We never see it again
Every few days
we go to see our daughter
My husband and I travel this way and that
passing each other in perpetual motion
leaving our son and younger daughter at home
Sometimes I feel paper thin
stretched out across the miles
On the specialist unit there are
set times
set meals
set amounts
set days
set weighs
set walks
set talks
set places
anorexia likes repetition
it takes the rhythm of life
removes the music
and gives you back a beep
or a whirr
and the clink of cutlery
on an untouched plate
We have to eat family meals
with other parents
and our children who don’t want to eat
Come on, have that little bit
Just that bit there
we urge and cajole
Some parents try to chit-chat
while they encourage and urge
Come on, you can do it
You need to have it
Come on
Somewhere betwee
n the Mad Hatter’s tea party
and a last meal on Death Row
I find my place at the table
Every bite is a grenade of pain
every morsel a heavy boulder
that takes the efforts of several people
to shift from one side of the plate to the other
and if it reaches a mouth
and is swallowed
you can’t cheer or whoop
you have to keep your exultation silent
you have to keep quiet
and carry on
Our daughter didn’t think in calories
when she arrived at the specialist unit
but now she’s the Einstein of calories
They are written on all the meal plans
Eating is a military campaign
that has to be calculated precisely
So is not eating
Mealtime conversations eddy
round and round
before draining away
She asks
Do I have to eat this?
Do I look different?
We don’t want to set her back
by saying the wrong thing
We pick our words sparingly
Bite Sized Page 1
