40 Pounds, Six Months, 16 Years: On parenting

When I was twelve I gained 40 pounds and shot up six inches. In a short period of time I went from the smallest girl in my gymnastics class to the tallest, the heaviest. All limbs and hips and midsection with no core strength and no coordination, everything about the familiar gym, my athletic and activity home for five years, seemed stark and unfamiliar. I couldn’t flip around the bars with any rhythm, lost my ability to tumble, and the splits sent me into hysterical tears. I took more bathroom breaks than I did runs down the trampolined runway - vaulting into nothing. I felt suddenly, starkly stopped. Nothing moved the way I wanted to move.

Adolescence is an ungainly beast. Of course, with hindsight, as the mother of pubescent children, I see this clearly. But then, my identity had shattered. I was in a body I didn’t recognize in a phase I hadn’t requested. Everything that had been taught and taut and tight and flexible was stiff and solid, fat and dimpled. We are most vulnerable when we are being recreated. I was, swiftly, someone new.

Here is how we are remade. A recipe, for your records.

1. Notice what is different. Take stock of your breaths and your strides. How they lengthen. How they halt.

2. Recognize what you will never regain. Let go of what was. You aren’t there, across that…