I have no doubt that I was my mother’s favorite child and she had my best interests at heart. Her concern was that I was distinctly chubbier than my older sister, though it never occurred to my mother that my sister might be overly skinny and was perhaps further from a normal weight than I was. I have studied photos of myself from that period. You might describe me as robust rather than waiflike, but certainly not obese. My mum’s side of the family tended to be overweight and she made it her mission to save me from their fate. The fact is that I might have just as easily shed the puppy fat in a natural way as I grew taller. And that would have made my life a whole lot simpler, both then and now.
I reached my target weight after five months and was presented with a celebratory pin badge. I wasn’t particularly delighted by the achievement, and proceeded to spend the following months packing the weight back on. I would steal money from my mother’s purse or my father’s change jar (which was really a cleaned out jar of my mum’s face cream that sat in his closet) and take myself off on my bike, making a stop at the gas station across the street to buy chocolate bars. The contraband stowed safely in my saddlebag, I would cycle to The Hills, an area of undeveloped land, and sit on The Log, where I would devour the foods that I had been denied. I honestly don’t remember if I did this in defiance or because I simply liked chocolate.
It wasn’t until I was seventeen and began dating for the first time that I took an active interest in my weight, namely shedding it on my terms. Between September and December of my final, autumn trimester at Bramcote Hills Grammar School I shrank from a chubby teen to a waiflike shadow of my former self. My sister, who was very handy with a sewing machine, spent her Christmas visit home from University altering all of my trousers so that they fitted me stovepipe style, all the better to show off my emaciated legs.
While my mother was now concerned about my weight for entirely different reasons, she never challenged me and my family accepted my weird relationship with food. The miniscule portions, the mood swings if I went too long without food since there was nothing in reserve, and The Box. The Box was a shoe box which contained my personal stash of beloved chocolate bars—the Mars bars, the Snickers bars, the Bounty bars—the list was extensive. I realized that I could enjoy as many chocolate bars as I desired provided I did so in moderation. To this end I kept a small knife in the box alongside the part wrapped, half -eaten stash. No meal would be complete without the ritual performed behind my closed bedroom door as I sliced off miniscule slivers of chocolate and savoured them until they dissolved in my mouth. As I recall these memories twenty-five years later, I realize that my behavior was pretty weird. I imagine I was borderline anorexic, if such a diagnosis exists.
