We observed the Jewish Sabbath on Friday night with the usual blessings and some innovations like clinking glasses after the wine blessing and then toasting our fortunate life with the pieces of bread we had just broken off. We had healthy children, a community of friends and family, and the resources to buy a house in Palo Alto, where influential residents from Stanford and Silicon Valley ensured highly regarded public schools. We even had jobs we liked, including flexible hours for me, and, for Ned, very little travel and most evenings at home.
Ned was rising into library management, leaving behind the reference work he loved. He put those skills to family use, especially in researching travel and food. He also wrote a restaurant column in the library employees’ newsletter, “Out to Lunch with Ned,” and started a menu collection. At Christmas, the kids helped him make fudge and cookies for his coworkers. For birthdays, he baked a checkerboard cake, a “How did you do that?” treat in chocolate and vanilla that his grandmother had made for him. He identified his grandmothers with food so much that he and his sister grew up calling them Grandma Soup and Grandma Pancake.
When Jacob was eight and Lisa five, we took a culinary tour of Eastern cities. Along with friends and family, the Liberty Bell, and the Statue of Liberty, each city had food highlights: french fry- topped hot dogs in Pittsburgh, cheesesteaks and the Melrose Diner in Philadelphia (“Everyone who knows goes to the Melrose”), astronaut ice cream in Washington, DC, and just about everything, including the “everything bagel,” in New York.
What we didn’t know was that Lisa soon would be hiding candy in her room, and feeling very anxious about the deception. It was a small room, and she had posted a sign on the door: “Welcome to Lisa’s Very Small Room,” but she could have hidden a chocolate factory in there and we may not have found it. Her room was a mess and she was Teflon to any organizational system. She would initially buy into it—this basket for hair things, that plastic tub for puzzles—but within days it was Ned or me or nobody maintaining order. Occasionally we helped her sweep piles from the floor into drawers so our cleaner could vacuum, but basically we admitted defeat and invaded Lisa’s space only when something smelled, guests were coming, or I just couldn’t stand it anymore. Looking back, I can see that letting this continue, cleaning up myself rather than getting Lisa to take responsibility, was a big mistake, perhaps the initial phase of our happy bubble bursting.
lisa: I wasn’t fat as a child. I was average. My parents bought high-quality produce and groceries. This is not to say we never had treats in our house, especially with Dad’s cooking skills. I would help him make the holiday fudge just so I could lick the bowl. But my lunch was never one of envy. Too often it was a plain cheese sandwich. The coolest parents packed cookies and other processed foods we loved.
On Saturday morning when Dad would ask, “Who wants to go to the farmers’ market?” sometimes Jake chose cartoons on TV and Mom stayed home with him. To me there was no question. I enjoyed the atmosphere, the smell of local flowers mixed with the sweet tang of oranges, and looking back now, I can see that I was being educated in food appreciation. I watched Dad figure out which melon was ripe. If I behaved, we got fresh-made, unpasteurized apple juice.
When I was old enough to start getting an allowance I began to rebel against my healthy upbringing. On the weekends my friends and I would go to 7-Eleven and I’d stock up. Oh, it was wonderful. Snickers, Baby Ruth, Caramello, Laffy Taffy, Pop Tarts. Every bit of junk I could afford, I purchased with joy. When I got home, I stashed the candy in my top desk drawer, so my parents wouldn’t find it. I remember sitting in my chair, unwrapping candy bar after candy bar and stuffing them down my throat. It felt so sneaky.
Food would always be there when friends couldn’t be found. It wasn’t that I hid my emotions. I have always been vocal, often too vocal. But something was missing. I was never satisfied with myself. I felt ugly and fat, and food solved issues I couldn’t even explain. I stopped bringing my parents’ lunches. It was better to wait in line for the mass-produced school lunch and ice cream sandwiches.
I was jealous of my schoolmates’ pudding cups, soda cans, and Fruit Gushers. From fourth grade on, I was just a bit heavier than most girls my age, but I felt like a complete outcast. I also developed boobs in fourth grade. At this time girls walked around the room, grabbing the backs of other girls’ shirts to do “bra checks.” It was embarrassing to have a bra but there came a time when I couldn’t wear a shirt, especially a white shirt, without one. Mom and I went to the Mervyn’s kids department and bought two training bras. Really they were just thin cloth made into the shape of a bra. You could completely see through them, which felt like people were seeing through me. I was wearing double-digit adult sizes by sixth grade.
At first I thought getting bigger was good because it meant I was growing up. At age six I got excited when I went from a size 6X to an 8, and I could fit into my cousin’s hand-me-down shoes. At age eight I knew my exact weight to be sixty pounds. I can recall one sunny afternoon, lounging on the top of the high monkey bars with my friends and questioning them on their weight. They were all in the fifties. By nine years old I started calling myself fat. I was a bit round but by no means fat. It probably didn’t help that my brother was always a twig.
sheila: We knew it was wrong to push food on Jacob and pull it away from Lisa, but it happened. When he was a toddler, a pediatrician had us counting bites of banana and whatever else our little prince would condescend to swallow, and reporting the meager results. Even as he grew, slowly, we kept an eye on those bites. At the dinner table, Jacob nibbled on a roasted chicken leg while Lisa downed a thigh and half a breast. He pushed roasted red potatoes around the plate, could be nudged to have a couple pieces, and ate a good amount of steamed broccoli. Lisa went for more of everything. In about fifteen years, we would be counting bites again, this time for Lisa.
In the preschool years, we tried various subterfuges that we thought they might not notice. Usually it was just a chipper comment, like: “Wow, the lasagna is so good! Is this organic chicken-apple sausage in it? We’re lucky Dad is such a great cook.”
Too often, I imagine, there was an imploring look that said, “Lisa, haven’t you had enough? Jacob, won’t you have a little more?”
Did we deny Lisa a voice, or stifle her needs, at the family table? That is one of the often-mentioned triggers to eating disorders, especially binge eating.
lisa: Dad has an annual holiday baking extravaganza to make gifts for his staff, and a lasagna-size Tupperware container of “extras” for us always ends up in the freezer. I loved donning the personal assistant hat, proud to be the chosen one. Dad is the executive type of chef, not one to easily share the kitchen, but for me he gave up total control. That’s where I got over fearing raw ingredients like the two sticks of butter and pound of semisweet chocolate chips that went into his cookies, which later became my cookies.
Mom was not the most inventive cook although my brother and I most likely did not give her much room to explore. He barely ate anything, while there wasn’t much that I would not try. I’m sure my parents found it difficult to cook meals to please the picky versus insatiable appetite. At restaurants I felt limited by the small portions on the children’s menu. I knew how I liked my hamburger cooked and rarely did I get one from McDonald’s. I preferred the homemade, hand-sculpted thick and juicy patties from the Peninsula Creamery, the one and only diner in downtown Palo Alto. My grandpa also had a knack for making delectable juicy hamburgers, although he often put onions in the meat or served them in an onion roll. I didn’t eat onions—one of the only things I wouldn’t eat.
I also remained set in my selection of ice cream flavors from the neighborhood parlor, Rick’s Rather Rich Ice Cream. I’m not sure if we ever knew the real Rick, but we liked to guess which one he was, the lanky brunet with a mustache or the round, balding elderly man? It didn’t matter. Rick’s was the place for families. We usually saw someone we knew there. More often than not I order
ed a junior scoop of cookies and cream, which had a minty undertone in its creamy vanilla base with generous chunks of Oreos. I still prefer my chunks of cookies nestled within the creamy texture of vanilla, but sometimes I branch out into the land of peppermint, mint chocolate chip, or cookie dough. I’m the same way with frozen yogurt—fairly plain vanilla and chocolate, but always with rainbow sprinkles swirled in.
“Let’s have the orange lunch today!” I proclaimed to Mom one sunny Saturday afternoon. My best friend, Feyi, had come over. Like me, like everyone, Feyi loved Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, bright cheese powder sprinkled over bleached white noodles. Mom snuck in some health, by way of carrot sticks and orange slices, on orange plastic plates if they happened to be the clean ones, so that we could have the all-orange lunch or dinner. By age seven, I was making my own. That is, boiling noodles and adding a fat source (butter and milk) with the orange powder.
sheila: In the 1980s, a few grocery stores and supermarkets had little deli departments over by the meat counter, but mostly they were in business to sell the raw ingredients for dinner and other household necessities. Takeout still usually meant metal-handled cardboard boxes from Chinese restaurants. Convenience foods came in frozen packages and boxes that you took home and dropped in boiling water or at least microwaved.
Ned and I are not back-to-the-land lunatics. We allowed processed foods in the house, the occasional soda, and we microwaved leftovers. We had sugar, butter, and chocolate, of course, especially in chocolate chip cookies. As much as we tried to give Jacob and Lisa a love of high-quality food, and in that regard we succeeded, when they were young we weren’t serving snails in garlic sauce or only products found in nature. Our children ate a lot of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, with the scary bright orange powder sprinkled over boiled noodles and butter. (The directions called for margarine, which we did not stock.) Later the noodles came in shapes other than tubes, but that was as far as Jacob and Lisa would bend. They did eat real cheese on bread and crackers, so once I thought what a treat it would be for them to have macaroni and cheese made from scratch. I knew enough to seek out a recipe from Betty Crocker, not Julia Child. On the cover of our well-used 1972 edition of The Betty Crocker Cookbook, the fictional Betty looks like a young Lady Bird Johnson, or an old Shirley Temple. Betty’s recipe calls for processed sharp American cheese. I used real cheddar cheese and while the dish got positive reviews from the adults, the children never gave it a chance. They had been imprinted by the Kraft brand and weren’t open to innovation. But even processed Velveeta wouldn’t have saved the mac ’n’ cheese. The children of foodies preferred the orange powder.
five
Fat Girls, Husky Boys
When Lisa was born a lusty eater, Ned didn’t exactly panic, but it did bring up serious dormant fears. Ned’s sister, Elaine, had long suffered for her weight, and Ned wanted to avoid all of that for Lisa. Ned was husky as a teenager, but Elaine has considered herself fat since birth.
We inherited the creaky bathroom scale that used to torture her. I’m not sure the spring-loaded metal antique, black with white speckles, was ever very accurate, but at some point I put it in the garage. Ned and I could find it, but not the kids. Then we couldn’t find it either and by the time we did, it was so rusty and cruddy that we threw it away.
I like not having a scale. Considering our middle age and enjoyment of food, Ned and I are resigned to a gradual gain into medium well-rounded senior citizenship. If only our retirement investment charts showed the steady progress of our weight charts.
When Ned’s waistbands seize up, he has been known to panic and eat cabbage soup for three days. He cooks up a five-quart pot that smells like the compost pile to start with and gets worse with reheating. After a few days it goes down the drain, but he feels lighter.
My weight-loss method is to exercise more and drink less. I love wine, but it stokes my appetite, so I rarely drink before a meal. Wine also fogs the short-term memory of what I’ve just eaten. A few dry days usually restore order. Until recently, I weighed myself maybe four times a year, at the Y and in the office of our internist, who takes a realistic position on weight and keeps a close eye on Ned’s constellation of health issues: hereditary heart disease, high cholesterol and blood pressure. However, the gym got a new electronic scale and it gave me five less pounds than the old one, so now I check more frequently.
In an article titled “The Diet Secrets of Slim Women,” Shape magazine claims that once-a-day weighing provides positive reinforcement. I guess this is true for the rare person who doesn’t obsess about weight. But if you’ve put on a few pounds, the focus on numbers can make you feel so much worse. What’s the point? All of your efforts are failing, so you might as well eat. It’s an unintended consequence and it doesn’t make sense.
That’s why constant weighing is counterproductive for most of us. I like the set-point theory, which holds that everyone has a weight we’re basically destined for, and within a few pounds of that, who cares? I know this is easy for a happily married, middle-age person to say. But the scale only causes trouble. If I register more than a slight increase, what I’ve already suspected when putting on my jeans, I get anxious and eat too much. If I weigh less than I thought, it’s party time! Again I am likely to overeat.
Ned’s sister, Elaine, has the same depraved reactions to weighing herself as I do, yet she climbs the scale at least once a day. Elaine has never been huge. But she’s always felt like she was, so reality doesn’t matter.
Elaine’s lifelong devotion to weight loss intersects far too often with what Judith Moore described in Fat Girl, the seminal over-eater’s memoir. An extremely unhappy childhood led Moore to believe “that inside every fat person was a hole the size of the world.” To compensate, “I built walls of fat, and I lived inside.” Elaine’s early life was not nearly as crushing, but there are similarities, and they had an unintended trickle-down effect on Lisa.
Moore wrote, and Elaine agrees, “I never do not know what I weigh.” And Ned has never known a self-confident older sister. He was born when Elaine was three years old, and already her size had been discussed at family gatherings in San Diego. Next to her cousin Ronda, Elaine was a giant. Girls were not supposed to be giants.
My sister, almost three years younger, had only a mild case of body-image issues. Still, I was glad it was Nancy and not me getting that kind of attention. In our families, even during Ned’s husky phase, he and I were the children who could eat whatever we wanted. For both of us, our sisters’ struggles, however imaginary, became cautionary tales. Let’s avoid that glare, for ourselves and then for our children.
Ned had bulked up in high school and through college, nipping one hundred and ninety pounds and a portly Jerry Garcia look, before taking up jogging and healthier food. He tried not to think about Lisa’s similarities in body type, not to revisit scenes from his childhood when his sister suffered for her size, but it was like trying to push back the ocean. Elaine cuddled baby Lisa and cooed, “She reminds me of me.”
As Lisa grew, Ned couldn’t help measuring her against Elaine at each age. He had to wonder, would she be as miserable? He tried to focus on buying and eating healthy foods, and getting exercise himself. Ned would be relieved when he noticed differences. Elaine never played sports, Lisa did. Elaine ate with both hands, Lisa usually didn’t.
I didn’t understand Elaine’s low self-esteem. She had great professional success as a teacher, a close family, and a tight, supportive group of friends that anyone would envy. She is very kind and took great care of their mother, who was widowed young and lived five minutes from Elaine’s house. Yet she says, “When I think about myself, ‘I’m fat’ is what always comes to mind first.” Until Lisa became bulimic and Elaine saw what that meant, she wished she could purge. She wished that she had the strength to stick her finger down her throat and stand over a toilet.
One weekend when Elaine came for a visit, I asked her to sit down and tell us how weight became the defining issue of her lif
e. It would help us understand what happened with Lisa, how memories Ned pushed away may have crept back in and inadvertently affected how he treated Lisa. Ned and I were surprised and pleased at how ready Elaine was to tell her story. As if she’d been waiting for years. She began, “I don’t remember ever feeling hungry. Or full.”
Elaine was seven pounds, three ounces at birth. That is, normal. Her parents lived next door to both sets of grandparents until she was two and a half, and she felt surrounded in love. Grandma Sophie had lost her only daughter and was particularly thrilled when Elaine was born. But being next door also meant more than enough attention for one shared grandchild. Two or three grandparents babysat Elaine every Saturday night. With so many arms to hold her, she didn’t walk until she was eighteen months old. The family worried that there was something wrong with her legs.
In the seat of power, the kitchen, Grandma Pancake (Sophie) was always baking, always something sweet. The other was Grandma Soup. Whether because of being intimidated or a lack of interest, and later, economic hard times, Elaine and Ned’s mother, Tilda, never really learned her way around food. She was a terrible cook. A common dinner for them growing up was Campbell’s soup, iceberg lettuce salad, and a can of string beans or creamed corn.
Elaine was always chubby, everyone agrees. Sipping tea in our living room, she remembers, “When people looked at pictures of me as a baby, they would say, ‘Oh, look at those pulkies (fat legs)!’” At least that’s the part she heard. When people would say, “You have such a nice smile,” Elaine took it to mean, “It’s just too bad you’re so fat.”
Hungry Page 6
