Starting a different story

When I looked at my body in the full-length mirror after a shower as a teenager the one thing I always hated was my stomach. Once puberty hit, I got curves, like every other girl. And I felt betrayed. My stomach was not flat or defined or angular which I imagined was necessary for beauty.

Then, I wasn't self-critical about where I'd picked these perceptions. I didn't analyze the constant stream of skinny media I consumed. Instead, I only knew my stomach as my greatest flaw.

I went to a small high school. Twenty-two kids in my graduating class. Not quite preppy, not quite hippie either, but somewhere in the middle. We did a lot of art. We read Dante and Dostoyevsky. We went to San Francisco to study architecture for a weekend and hiked the Lost Coast together. But because the class was so small all of my classmates were my friends, even when they weren't. Competition was fierce.

The summer before ninth grade a tall red-headed girl, who had been in my eighth grade class and played the meanest game of basketball ever, became anorexic.

Five foot ten by the age of fourteen, she'd always been lanky, but tough too. In the fall we heard she was hospitalized weighing 69 pounds. She never came back to our school, and though she lived, I only saw her twice again, once the year after we all graduated and once later in passing on the street. Both times she looked gaunt and hungry without the fire she'd once had when she was still a kid, shooting hoops, pushing the boys out of the way.

But because of the smallness of our high school world, that girl's anorexia hit the girls in my class like a tidal wave. Everyone got skinny. Everyone had boney hips. Curves were shunned at a time when curves were just developing.

And though I never became fully entrenched in the deep scaring groove that anorexia can become, I did obsess about my weight. I didn't eat enough.

But I was also lucky, because I've never been drawn to the superficial. Always, I've been pulled to ideas, to what's deep, to things that matter beyond appearance. So though I wavered there on the brink of an obsession with skinniness, I never fully gave in to its calling. Always distracted at the last minute by somebody's story, by teaching kids, or by body boarding.

But many girls in my class were less lucky. Content to suck on one lolly pop all day long, they were gorgeous and gaunt and pissed off.

I graduated and spent a year in Europe with a boy I'd met in Germany. He taught me to rock climb, and for the first time in my life I realized that my body was really good for something other than being looked at. Since then, I've always fallen back on this. I've started to see my body as a tool---as a part of the mechanism that makes it possible for me to mountain bike, to ski, to run, to swim, to climb. And I acquired a decent set of legs. Some muscles where they aught to be. Some strength.

But I still maintained an uneasy relationship with my stomach. Less lean, less tough, less firm than the rest of me, it portrayed my proverbial soft side. It made me feel vulnerable, if not a little self-loathing.

Then, two April's ago, I hung out with my mom who was living in Boulder, Colorado. I flew out over the tall jagged Rocky Mountains to see her, and we sat in her tiny studio apartment, going through her horrible wardrobe of clothing, and talking first time about her body image.

It hit me then. More than anything else, it was my mother;s self-depreciating, shy, prudish perception of herself that defined the language of my own negative image. Always dressed in a turtleneck, even in summer, she hates her collar bones, her stomach, her thighs. And she is obsessed with the small roll of flesh that curves over the waist of her size eight jeans.

A month after our visit, I found out I was pregnant, and for the first time in my life I put my hand on the curve of my stomach and felt wonder.

Wonder that this body, this stomach could contain life. And this feeling continued to grow as the orb of my belly did. I watched my skin grow taught. Watched the inevitable stretch marks appear, despite coco butter and crossed fingers. Watched my belly button pop out.

And then my son was born and I was left with the sagging curve of womb that had been his world. But something of the reverie I'd felt towards my stomach remained. I made a pact with myself to no longer rile against a part of me that could do such a miraculous thing.

Since then I've done a lot of running. More than I've ever done, because I have the time, the space, the energy to do it. And my stomach, like my entire body has grown strong as a result. But something else has changed along the way, that has more to do with my perception than with actual flesh.

It has to do with gratitude for my body, just as it is. For the pure loveliness of a stomach that has given birth, for the wonderment hips. Yet posting this picture for Self Portrait Tuesday’s September theme of body parts still seemed risky. An open acknowledgement of my softest side. But I was compelled to post anyway, because as I read what so many other lovely women write, I know that this story is terribly universal.

We've all been here, it seems. This internal battling with the beauty and the softness of curves that make us who we are. And I'm ready to start a different story.

because some days it's all about ME

Answers to the meme Steph tagged me with: 7 Things I Plan to Do Before I Die: 1) Write & publish. Writing is a love-hate thing for me. I've established that I can't live without it, but I've also established that writing is a major pain in my ass. It's introspective, personal, and challenging, yet without it I feel an absence of purpose. I believe deeply that writing can affect change, and I feel that it is one of the ways that I can affect change in the world. Yet I procrastinate about writing whenever I possibly can. It's a vicious thing, this writer's bug I've got.

2) Teach writing at a university(dream job.)

3) Keep bees and chickens and grow an organic garden. The first thing I plan to do when we have land again is to learn how to keep bees, I love honey and as I mentioned here, bees are becoming threatened throughout the world by bee blights that are resistant to most traditional treatments. This will ultimately affect food production world wide, and on a small scale I can make a difference by learning bee keeping techniques, and growing organic vegitables and flowers. As for the chickens, I kept chickens when I was a kid. One chicken, named Blackie, came when I called her and sat on my shoulder. She was the fancy breed of chicken that lays green and blue eggs. And I loved having fresh eggs. Nothing quite like them.

4) Learn to sail. I would love to take my kids on a sailing trip around the world for a few years & home school them, but if that's not possible, at the very least I'd like to have a small boat we can spend summer weekends on, diving off the deck, basking in the sun, and sleeping like sardines in a can packed below deck.

5) Live in a foreign country for a year (or more) with my kids and husband. DH and I have many roots in Italy and Germany, and I would love for Bean to grow up knowing that culture is an expansive thing, that horizons stretch farther than the eye can see, and that diversity is a necessary and vital part of human existence.

6) Learn a second language fluently (see #5)

7) Hang glide I've always wanted to do this since I was little & I'd look up in the sky in Colorado where I lived and see hang gliders circling like birds in dizzy winged spirals.

7 Things I Can Do: 1. Figure out how kids learn, and help them with that process. 2. Rescue a 6 foot, 220 lb guy from the bottom of a swimming pool (or from the ocean---which I once did, for DH in Puerto Rico when his blood sugar went low when we were snorkeling over a coral reef.) 3. Use grammar & punctuation rules correctly. (My freshman year in college one of my writing teachers tore apart a piece of my writing, telling me to get Strunk & White's book and use it, and that she was not "my writing janitor." Later she said, "once you know the rules, you can break them." I now know them well enough to break, though I'm still a TERRIBLE speller--thank god for spell check! 4. Articulate my ideas in conversation. 5. Listen. 6. Make some wickedly good scones. 7. Forgive people easily.

7 Things I Cannot Do: 1. Play any musical instrument. 2. Order drinks at a bar without feeling self-conscious. 3. Go to a party without obsessing about my outfit. 4. Understand religious or political extremists. 5. Spell. (For years I spelled water, w-a-t-t-e-r, different as d-i-f-e-r-e-n-t and just last night I realized I’ve been spelling destruction as d-i-s-t-r-u-c-t-i-o-n for years now!) 6. A downward dog that doesn’t make other people cringe watching me. 7. Sex in a public bathroom.

7 Things That Attract Me to the Opposite Sex: 1. Self confidence. 2. Beautiful eyes (love smiley lines!!) 3. The ability to build things and fix things with his hands. 4. Someone who can do sports with me without feeling the need to compete (seriously, I'll NEVER have pecs like that, so no, I'll never be able to jump a log on my mountain bike like that. Sorry.) 5. The ability to cook really well. 6. A sense of humor. 7. Willingness to grow, change & listen. 7 Things I Say Most Often: 1. I love you. 2. Who's a little bean? 3. Shhhhh! 4. It's your turn 5. Just let me finish this! 6. Ow (in response to my hair being pulled by Bean a million times a day) 7. Hmmm.

7 Celebrity Crushes: Because I grew up without TV in my house, I have a huge popular culture void that I'm still trying to accommodate for. That said, it's nearly impossible for me to name five celebs I even find interesting, let alone have crushes on.

7 people I want to do this: If you're inspired, go for it. Leave your answers in the comments or a link to your site!

The way we talk

I spent my senior year of high school skipping class to go body surfing with a red-headed rodeo boy who worked at the gym where I taught swimming lessons. I had other boyfriends too, but I could never decide on which one to keep. Then I went to Germany and met a boy with long hair who rock climbed and had just finished a cycling tour of most of northern Europe. I fell in love, and spent a year with him there.

We had a lot of fun: I learned to rock climb, and road ride with him. We traveled a lot. But somehow we never could really talk---in spite of the fact that he was a dual German-US citizen and could speak English fluently. In fact, our communication, or lack of it had less to do with language and more to do with the fact that we didn't have the same starting point. There was no overlap between us, so we were always hearing different things.

I read James Joyce and Jane Austin at the local library. He hated to read. I used words like etymology, nomenclature, and quintessential, and he'd give me blank looks, until I paraphrased. I was planning to go to college. He was planning not to. I wanted to have romance, he wanted to have sex.

Eventually I went to college and he kept rock climbing. I had a bunch of other men in my life then, some were sort of boyfriends, some just bed friends. And I spent a lot of money on phone calls. We tried to grow towards each other, to clarify things, to articulate something about the way our hearts moved, but everything we said clashed, and when he moved to the states I kept wanting him to read the damn poetry I wrote for him, and to respond. And he kept kicking my ass mountain biking and would leave me crying on trails I couldn't ride.

So I rode Canada with a bunch of girls, from Massachusetts. And several hundred miles of road later, after swimming in Canadian lakes and fixing my own derailleur, I decided I didn't need a man.

Then I met my husband. He was a total biking dork, who said he had his life all figured out. The first words I said to him were "nice bike," the mountain biker's equivalent of the "you had me at hello."

We went downhill mountain biking the day after we met, and had an fantastic time: he let me ride his bike, and waited for me when I couldn't keep up without making me feel small, and he rode my bike, and broke my wheel. But mostly, we talked. And we talked. And we listened. And we understood. And for the first time ever, I felt I'd found a man who wanted to share with me more than just his own ego, and who wanted to hear more than just 'I love you.' Which is what I told him two months later.

He was the first man, and the only man to whom I've ever said those words first. And so I married him.

Next week is his birthday. It will be the seventh birthday I will have spent with him, and I still can't shake the feeling that I've hit the jack pot big time. We play together, run together, ride together and fight together. And when we talk together, we hear each other. We speak the same language, use the same metaphors. Which isn't to say, communication is effortless, because it isn't. There are plenty of days when our words tangle and the meaning is lost. But when we're both trying, our words give our love wings. And that's a damn fine thing.

The way we operate

We went on a run tonight, along the lake, as we do most nights. A little over 4 miles in all, our route takes us past the busy city center, and then down along the waterfront bike path where old train cars sit abandoned on rusted tracks, painted with fantastic graffiti art. The path is mostly paved and mostly flat after we get to the water down a steep hill. We run side by side, pushing Bean in his Chariot stroller, through the evening air. Tonight we talked about building a house as we ran. We've started the process of dreaming. Of driving through the countryside near here, looking for renovated farmhouses or land where we can build a timber frame.

But somehow, recently, this process of trying to visualize our future home, has created a lot discord for us. Our ways of imagining our future are is very different. Perhaps stereotypically so--the whole men are from Mars, women from Venus bit.

DH is an idealist, perhaps with a twinge of OCD. When he finds something he loves, he becomes obsessed with it: bikes, coffee roasting, stereo equipment, and now timber frames, he pursues his obsessions relentlessly. Searching the internet, ordering brochures, becoming increasingly knowledgeable and simultaneously increasingly adamant. His optimism knows no bounds.

By comparison, I'm slow to warm to a new idea. I come from a childhood with little money, and parents who regretted much. My mother and I talk often now, and I still here the regret in her voice about choices she and my father made. "I never wanted any of the houses we lived in," she has said. She has also said, "Money is an odd, strange thing." And she has said, "I told you so" when things don't work out more times than I care to remember, though perhaps not quite in those words.

So when it comes to imagining something new, I like to think of the worst case scenarios first, and gradually eliminate them with hard evidence as the plan grows firm. It frustrates DH to no end that I navigate this way: with fear and worry first, optimism last. But I can't help it. Pessimism and angst seem to be written deeply into my genetic code---an unwanted inheritance from my mother, that I'd like to be rid of, but can't simply shake.

So tonight, running under chokecherries and quaking aspens, we argued about the costs of building versus buying a house already built, established on land already cleared, with fields already mowed. Somehow, it seems to be a fundamental error code between men and women: that when a woman states her fears, her worries, her deepest insecurities, she DOESN'T WANT THE MAN IN HER LIFE TO FIX THEM. She just wants TO BE HEARD. Or at least, that's how it works for me.

I don't want him to hear me say I'm afraid that the costs of building might spiral out of control, and then argue why I'm wrong.

I don't want to be convinced, right off the bat that my fears are irrational. I know they probably are. They are fears after all. That's the nature of fear. Instead, I want to be heard. Simply that. I want him to say, "Hmm, I hear you saying that your afraid that the costs are going to spiral out of control if we build. That's a reasonable fear, as far as fears go." And then say nothing else.

Because, oddly, in just hearing my fears. In letting me put them out in front of me---sharp and jagged the way they are---it makes it possible for me to gradually let go of them. Over time, I'll come around to almost anything, if I get enough facts, and if the facts are backed up.

I'm spontaneous mostly---especially in friendship and affection---but when it comes to big decisions that involve our family's future, I can't help but feel terrified first and excited second.

So tonight, running, after he'd interrupted me and made me feel stupid because of my fears, I completely kicked his ass on the run. Kept less than a 8 minute mile pace the whole way. And it felt good. Good to run fast. To feel my muscles warm to the pounding of my blood, to sprint. And it felt good to hear him panting hard beside me. Harder than me.

And at the end of our run, I loved him so much again.

Taking risks

I sat down to write tonight, not for this blog, but for the bigger writing I'm doing in my life--for a writing workshop I've become a part of---and eventually, possibly, for a book. Last week, after barely making the deadline, I submitted a dozen pages describing my father's death. Of what I learned from being there with him in the weeks before he died and during those strange, miraculous moments where worlds rush together and spirit is tangible in the room.

It was a good piece, and I was grateful for being told that, as there are many dark moments during the process of writing where it is irritating and fruitless and frustrating. But they had a lot of questions about the information I didn't include. About my relationship to my sisters, to my mother: who often told me growing up, "If you had just come at a different time, everything would be different between me and your father," and about my beliefs, and the beliefs of my dad. I left the workshop, my head spinning, and watched the sun set into the lake as I drove home.

Since then I've been struggling with the realization that if I really want to write, it will be longer than a dozen pages. Longer than several dozen. And this terrifies me, because of the commitment, the challenge, and the vulnerability of writing so much. And yet, tonight, doing art, I realized that it is like all the other things I do. I can't know where it will lead, until I begin it. And so, reluctantly, I do.

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manor of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. "

--Goethe

Self portrait

I did a 20 mile ride today (averaging just over 17 mph) through rolling farmland, up steep hills under shady maples and beeches. Past meadows of cornflowers, clover and alfalfa. I saw two tough farm boys, about twelve years old, tossing rectangular hay bails onto the bail elevator. Zipped past a field of black and white cows, lying down, flie on their backs, chewing cud. And felt the incredible gleeful surge of adrenaline in my legs. They're feeling stronger now, than ever before. I've been running daily, and am inspired by this lady to start training for a triathlon. I've always wanted to, and could, I think. If I dared. It's the end of the season though, and the only race I could find near where I live, happens on August 27 which seems too soon. I'd be all jittery and anxious, crashing into the water with so many other people. But when I told DH of my dream, he said "Beanie & I will be your pit crew. Let's go this week and time you on the course." Just like that. Such a major vote of confidence. I love that.