I place a cup of green tea carefully on the floor of my walk-in closet and click the door shut behind me. Almost sixty-two, I’ve been trying to get myself to look in the mirror naked, to look without critique. (A gigantic ass! Doughy rolls! Thighs like the chunky Victorian legs of the behemoth table Aunt Helen bequeathed to us!) This morning I will approach the mirror in my closet in meditation. Today I will forgive the body I’ve inhabited all these years, and I will not come out of this closet until I find the well of tenderness hidden in these swollen fat cells.
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Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories
All Of Me
Correspondence
Janie Savage observes correctly that I married my second husband at the age of fifty. My reproductive capacity had come to an end, mostly due to age rather than an eating disorder. My twins — a gift to my husband, who did not want to adopt — were born later the same year, when my older children were already in their twenties. The birth couldn’t have happened without the help of a young woman from California who donated her eggs. It is, indeed, another story, one full of joy, trepidation, and suspense, but it’s my twins’ story to tell.
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March 2009
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