June 9, 1985

The day I was born. My mom likes to tell me about how the doctor and my father were watching the Chicago Cubs game during breaks in her pushing to get me out. I can imagine both my father and the doctor encouraging her and telling her she was doing great and then both of them turning their heads to see the next play or keep an eye on the score. My dad likes to tease me and say it is my fault that they lost that game and then went on a horrible losing streak after a marvelous winning streak. I don't believe that to be true at all. The Chicago Cubs know how to choke all on their own. Me being born had nothing to do with it.

My first memories that I have are very vague, very shadowed. I remember tidbits, images, smells, sounds. I remember being a happy girl, I remember mom always wanting me to sit still while she did my hair in curls or long french braids. I remember Andy and I mostly getting along and playing together. I remember our first house and how big it seemed to me when in reality it was tiny. It was a happy house though filled with happy times. I always remember my mom telling me that on my fourth birthday I pushed my birthday cake away and stated "I don't want to get fat." If only that mindset and determination would have stuck with me my entire life.

There wasn't much in my life that was sad. My parents were happy and they were great parents. They played with us, they took us places, they blessed us with toys and showed their love for us in ways that only they could. I really did have a happy family life.

It is important to note that in my family, passing down from generation to generation, food equals love. When someone cooks for you, they are telling you they love you. When they bake a treat, or buy your favorite cookies, they love you. When they go out of their way to make your favorite dinner, they love you. Turning down food was like a slap in the face, especially to my dad who managed restaurants for years. Cooking was and is still a passion for that man and he is exceptionally good at it. To this day I hate saying "no thank you" to my dad after he has made something.

My earliest memories of food involve my dad working at Icee. How cool, right? He would sometimes have broken Icee machines in the warehouse that still produced Icees and we would get to eat them. Not to mention the stacks upon stacks of free Icee coupons he would bring home to us so we could run up to the Kwik Mart and get a free Icee whenever we wanted. There were also giant bags of popcorn. If they didn't go to feed the ducks, we ate them.

I don't remember ever getting fat. I just remember BEING fat. By the time I started kindergarten I was already taller than everyone too. I remember two boys standing behind me saying "Why are you so big?" That was my first day of school. I didn't think too much of it really. I just thought I was taller and stocky. The boys would catch up eventually, right? No one ever really picked on me very much those first few years of school, but I did remain bigger than everyone. Not only in my height, but in my girth. I was a chubby girl. There was no lack of friends, no lack of fun, no lack of sleepovers, but I was definitely different in the way I looked and the way my brain worked. While most of my girlfriends were tiny little things, I was the big girl. Sometimes I did feel like a tag-a-long that didn't quite fit in.

Having an older brother who I was actually close to stopped the older kids from being mean to me. Andy would have never let someone pick on me, at least not to my face. In fact, he sometimes even let me hang out with his friends because there were no girls my age in my neighborhood. Andy and I may have fought, because that's what siblings do, but for the most part we got along wonderfully. He never called me fat, he never mentioned my weight, he was just my brother, my friend, someone I had when no one else was around.

Because of that, school was mostly tolerable. I rarely remember being picked on by kids a lot. Sometimes the words "fat girl" or "big girl" came out of a bully's mouth but not to the point that I severely hated my childhood. Around third grade is when I really started in with the secretive eating. I think it was my way of coping with being different, with not having anyone in the neighborhood to play with. It was my way of filling some kind of void and comforting myself. Mom and dad both worked, even after Seth was born, Grandma was our full time babysitter after school and in the summer months when we were out of school.

To Be Continued....