My hands have spread to Large lately, just in the past year. Over all of the widening and spreading and thinning and whatnot over the years I still had small hands, delicate fingers. They’re fleeing now, too: the North Face gloves I got last winter are persnickety to take on and off, at best. Curses snatch themselves from my mouth as I spend inordinately long fiddling with too-tight fingersleeves…
I notice it in the mirror the other day: I am apparently flaking, much to my surprise. Hair, skin, lips, all of it just sloughing off. Where clear green eyes once set firmly below slightly edgy brows, they now peer out from asphalt under-eyes. I brush the cottage-cheese stomach and thighs I still need to lose 60 pounds from and find my face in the bathroom mirror, twisted into disgust. What’s wrong with you?
It doesn’t help that I’m going broke, spend nearly all of my time alone, have to give up lifelong writing dreams that were beginning to fledge, have no significant other or children, and that most of my family is 3000 miles away.
My mom is here though. She’s 68 years old, and she hates it when I mention her publicly. Somehow over the years, while she is visibly older in ways like her skin starts leaking blood as soon as a blade or anything else is within sizing9-up distance, and her hair is now grey and white, she’s gotten so much more beautiful. Ethereal, almost. I mean, don’t tell her that, at least not if you’re me. But she is.
While our highly dysfunctional relationship remains that, she is a model in so many ways. She may not like me, but she does love me, and when we make the tiniest effort, we get along just fine.
And I decide to go nuke some of the mashed potatoes she made for us for Thanksgiving, a little lumpy but SO delicious, and some of the turkey, too, before I head to my volunteer shift. The sixty pounds can wait, and I’ll be riding my bike here shortly, anyway.
Distractible Content 