Big Old Lady Who Stands Her Ground

Today is New York City's annual LGBT Pride Parade.  I wish I could be there.  I'd love to see Edie Windsor as Grand Marshall.  As George Takei says, "Rosa Parks, Edie Windsor--never underestimate the power of a little old lady who stands her ground."  

I wanna be an old lady who stands her ground, too.  At forty-two I've got just a few more years til I get to label myself as old, but I've got another obstacle in my way toward little old lady greatness:  I don't have the body type.  Rosa Parks and Edie Windsor, yes, you can call them little.  Not me.  I'll be a big old lady who stands her ground.

It's OK that I can't make it to the parade.  I can stand my ground while sitting in a comfy chair: I've got a good book to read.

I've longed to be a progressive activist since ninth grade when I first read the book Black Like Me.  It spurred my interest in the Civil Rights Movement.  After reading The Color Purple and Rubyfruit Jungle my interest in feminism and lesbian rights grew, too.

The world is far from perfect, but the work so many social progressives have done is creating positive change.  Today African-Americans, American women, and LGBT Americans are trampled upon far less than they were back when I first started paying attention in ninth grade.  There is much work to do still, but things are getting better.

Another oppressed group has caught my attention in the last three years: fat people.  Since I read Dr. Linda Bacon's book Health at Every Size, I've become interested in fat people's health.  My own health in particular, since I've been told since I was in third grade I need to lose weight.  Except for when I was told to gain weight in fifth grade when I had developed anorexia.  My body has been at both extremes, fighting other people's judgment.

I've long spoken out for the underdog.  Sometimes I don't fit inside the group I speak out for (African-Americans) and sometimes I do (American women, the B in LGBT), but never have I felt like I belong so strongly to a burgeoning social movement.  I'm speaking out for myself.  This is personal.

I am fat.  I am healthy.  My body is mine, not yours.

I'm here, a big old lady who stands her ground, telling fat phobes to get off my lawn.  It's not just about health, it's about oppression.  I'm sick and tired of so-called authorities such as the AMA calling obesity a disease.  Telling all fat people that they are diseased is not just untrue, it's discrimination based on a person's appearance.

For example, high blood pressure.  Some fat people have high blood pressure.  Some thin people have high blood pressure, too.  I'm fat, but I have lowish blood pressure.  I'm friends with people whose bodies carry much less fat than mine, and they take medication for high blood pressure, but I don't.  Is it genetics?  Diet?  Exercise?  Who knows.  Just because I'm fat doesn't mean I'm not healthy.  Precisely because we can't tell by appearance how healthy a person is, size and weight needs to be taken out of the equation when assessing an individual's health.

The best health advice for people of all sizes--tall, short, fat, thin, and everything in between is this: eat a variety of real food (primarily plants), move your body in pleasurable ways, and love yourself. That's Dr. Linda Bacon's advice in her outstanding book.  I can't recommend it highly enough.

If you can't make it to the Pride Parade today, I have an alternative plan for some progressive activism you can do: read.  Books have always gotten this big old lady ready to stand her ground.

Dr. Weil Agrees: Obesity Is Not a Disease

I don't have time for a long rant.  I promised my kiddo we'd go for a hike in the woods today.  You know, what Health at Every Size guru Dr. Linda Bacon calls "active living":

HAES encourages people to build activity into their day-to-day routines and focuses on helping people find enjoyable ways of being active. The goal is to promote well-being and self-care rather than advising individuals to meet set guidelines for frequency and intensity of exercise. Active living is promoted for a range of physical, psychological and other synergistic benefits which are independent of weight loss. Myths around weight control and exercise are explicitly challenged. Physical activity is also used in HAES as a way of healing a sense of body distrust and alienation from physicality that may be experienced when people are taught to over-ride embodied internal signals in pursuit of externally derived goals, such as commonly occurs in dieting.  --Dr. Linda Bacon, Nutrition Journal 2011, 10:9

I've had doctors try to prescribe Metformin for my Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS).  It's a diabetes medication but it's useful for some patients with PCOS too.  Not me.  Since I already don't have high blood glucose levels, the medication makes me feel sick.  I suspect it lowers my blood glucose levels too much.  I feel like someone who has gone days without eating when I take it: irritable, shaky, lightheaded, and nauseous.  But guess what else is good for managing PCOS?  Exercise.  Active Living.  I don't need a doctor's prescription to go for a hike in the woods with my kiddo.  It's fun!  It just happens to be something healthy we can do with our bodies, to "move them in pleasurable ways" as the good doctor Bacon advises.

So I don't have time to go on and on.  Gotta get moving' on.  But I wanted to share this good news: Dr. Andrew Weil is on board.  I've already blogged about my feelings toward the AMA.  Here is Dr. Andrew Weil's take on the American Medical Association's recent decision to classify obesity as a disease:

Some people (including me) disagree with the AMA's action. The vote to classify obesity as a disease went against a recommendation of the organization's Council on Science and Public Health, which studied the issue for a year and decided that obesity shouldn't be considered a disease because the measure most often used to define it – the body mass index (BMI) – is unreliable...I do not consider obesity a disease. Rather, I see it as a condition that may increase risk of certain diseases. But it is possible to be obese and healthy - if one eats a balanced diet, gets regular physical activity, attends to other aspects of lifestyle that influence health, and makes use of appropriate preventive medical services.  --Dr. Andrew Weil

Hooray!  Now, off to have fun with my kid through healthy, active living.  May you find something fun to do with your body today too.

Epic Pro-Choice/Pro-Life Double Rant!

Wow!  Watch @elliottcmorgan and @megturney host this edition of SourceFed, featuring an epic pro-choice/pro-life Double Rant!:

 

What I like about SourceFed, which is different than most other news media sources, is that the hosts are not stiff, politically correct mannequins.  They are real people with real opinions.  Elliott Morgan is pro-life but that doesn't automatically make him a misogynist.  Humans are not automated beings.  We are complex and messy and stubborn and curious.  That's what I like about SourceFed.  It's human.

Here's the best part of Elliott Morgan's rant:

I typically choose not to identify myself as anything, not because I don't have opinions but because titles come with baggage and people will take whatever stance you hold and dismiss you once they know which way you lean.  

Labels kill discussion, they spur debates and the cement idleness.  Labels ensure that your face becomes red with rage but your hands and feet remain still and actionless.  

We humans are so much better at winning debates than we are at abolishing any kind of oppression, however one of the saddest parts of the abortion debate for me, besides every single abortion ever, is not that my stance might come with overgeneralizations, that's human nature, that's what happens when you open the floor for discussion, it's that I'm especially ostracized by my admission of being pro-life on account of being male.  

For example, tell a husband whose pregnant wife just died that only his wife is dead.  And the idea that I in any way support inequality, let alone by my belief in the sanctity of life is not simply inaccurate it is heart-shatteringly baffling.  

Wendy Davis deserves a lot of respect, and I stand with her, as I will stand with anybody who stands for what they believe in, but I will also fight for the unborn.  And I'll fight for the abandoned children in our foster system that the pro-lifers have forgotten.  And the death row inmates that pro-lifers have deemed unworthy of life. 

I've written about my thoughts on abortion here before.  Basically, I think the government should stay out of it.  I have complex feelings about abortion.  As a subfertile woman, I've never been put in the position to choose, so it's hard for me to say, but as someone who tried so hard to get pregnant, I don't think I could ever have an abortion.  When I was six-week's pregnant, when I saw the heartbeat on ultrasoud of the fetus that would later be named Katie,  I didn't think, "Aww, that's our clump of cells!"  I thought, "Aww, that's our baby!"

But I was in a loving, safe relationship.  I was not raped.  I was not physically or mentally ill.  How could I know how another woman would feel in her individual situation?  It's not for me to tell another person what to do with her own body.

I wish our society would work to help women who have an unwanted pregnancy find other options than terminating it, but I also don't want the government telling women what to do with their bodies.  I think abortion should be legal and rare and the decisions surrounding it made by the mother.  Spouses, doctors, religious leaders, and spiritual guides can be consulted, but government bureaucrats and politicians should keep their opinions about other people's bodies to themselves.

I respect people like Elliott Morgan, people who seem to genuinely care more about saving lives than attacking their political opponents and winning debates.

June 26: A Gay Day in History

Will + Becky = Love (October 22, 2004)

I feel so gay about today's SCOTUS ruling on DOMA and Prop 8, I'm compelled to share our wedding photo. When Will and I decided to get married back in 2004, we joked that one of us should get a sex change operation to protest the illegality of gay marriage. I'm happy that in just nine years our idea has become ridiculous. 

When my mom presented us with the cake, she said the cake toppers were wrong because the man has short dark hair like me and the woman has long light hair like Will. I tried to remove the heads and switch them, but they were too stubbornly attached. I have a dream that some day all cake toppers will have detachable heads so all adults in consensual relationships can design their wedding cakes accordingly.

It's awesome that SCOTUS ruled in favor of marriage equality in June, which has long been designated LGBT Pride Month, but it would have been even more amazing if they had waited two days to announce the ruling on the actual anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, the major turning point in LGBT-rights history, June 28th.  

June 26th is OK with me.  It's long been a significant date in my personal history.  It's the birthday of Reuben Weinshilbaum, the boy who turned me gay.

I'm joking of course.  No one turned me gay.  I've probably been bisexual since I rented out my mom's womb.  The first girl I remember ever being attracted to was my friend Courtney, who I met at the St. Joseph Public Library storytime when we were both four.  (I met my future husband, Will, when we both worked at another public library.  Who knew libraries were such hot spots for hookups?)  

Reuben Weinshilbaum broke my heart but he didn't turn me gay, even though I dated almost exclusively women for many years after he told me to leave him alone.  I eventually went back to my bisexual ways after time healed the heteosexual part of my heart, broken by Reuben Weinshilbaum's unrequited love.  I loved several people, both men and women, until I found the one person who fits me best.  Will happens to be a man, so I was lucky back in 2004 that it was legal for me to marry him.  Had he been a woman, we would have exchanged rings and vows and told people we were married, but it wouldn't be the same.  It wouldn't be like it is today, June 26, 2013, when our country grew up and realized consensual love between two people is a glorious thing which should be celebrated and sanctioned.

I no longer have any animosity toward Reuben Weinshilbaum.  I hope he's having a gay birthday today, wherever he is, whomever he's with.  Jealous love is immature.  The love I feel for Reuben now is mature.  For a few years in my late teens and early twenties I thought men in general were jerks because one boy jerked me around.  Just as our country has evolved, so have I.  

Love is love.  May we all find it in a way that fits us best.

Proud of My Bounce

When I was a kid most authority figures told me I was either too fat or too thin.  Except for one person.  My elementary school gym teacher.  Her name was Ms. Haas.  When I was in fourth grade she said the most remarkable thing to me one afternoon.

I had been sent to Weight Watchers the year before, in third grade.  By fourth grade, with the help of a six-inch spike in my height one summer, I had managed to lose a significant amount of weight.  I had not yet developed anorexia.  That diagnosis wouldn't come until the next year, after I passed out in fifth grade and the school encouraged my mom, who has an understandable fear of the medical establishment after the way she was treated prior to my birth, to take me to the doctor and, eventually, a therapist who helped me stop starving myself.

Fourth-grade was the one year of my life everyone around seemed satisfied with my body.  I was neither too fat nor too skinny.  

Everyone but myself.  And Ms. Haas.  She didn't seem to care one way or the other.  Most of my teachers, my parents, my siblings, my friends, my neighbors, everyone but Ms. Haas commented on how great I looked.  Ms. Haas had never said anything about my weight-loss.  She had never made any comments about my body ever.  

Then one afternoon, out on the blacktop, we were playing kickball.  I kicked the ball so far it took several minutes for the opposing team to get their act together and find it out in the weeds.  After rounding the bases, I found myself standing next to Ms. Haas, waiting for the kids to retrieve the ball I had so epically kicked.  As I stood there next to Ms. Haas, I wiped my brow and said to her, "I'm always so sweaty.  Even after I lost so much weight, I sweat so much."

"Sweating is good for you.  It's a sign that your body is healthy," she said to me, although her eyes were on the group of kids goofing off in the weeds in the general vicinity of where the ball had landed.  She lifted her whistle, but she didn't blow it yet.

"It is?" I said, surprised.  I suspected Ms. Haas was a feminist, something I'd heard about on TV while watching the news with my folks, with her short, mannish hair cut and her makeup-less face.  She looked nothing like my mom who set her hair in rollers and wouldn't leave the house without putting on her face.  Maybe feminists do not believe that saying about glowing women and sweaty horses, I thought to myself.

I looked up and noticed a couple of skinny girls had wandered off, bored with their positions in the outfield, hanging upside down on the monkey bars.

"No matter how much weight I lose I'll never be able to hang upside-down from the monkey bars," I said, wistfully.

And that's when Ms. Haas said it.  It was moments before she took off running toward the rowdy boys in the weeds, her whistle just inches away from her lips.  She looked at me briefly, with a cocked brow, and said, "Becky, did you see how far you kicked that ball?  Even when you were chubby, you've always been one of the most athletic kids I've ever taught."  

She took off running, blowing her whistle at the boys out in the weeds.  We never talked about my body again.

I look back on it now and I realize what an excellent role model Ms. Haas was.  But I didn't listen to her then.  I continued to hate my body until three years ago when I discovered another good role model, Dr. Linda Bacon.

I follow Dr. Bacon on social media now for inspiration.  This morning she shared an article that made my inner-third-grader-who-was-sent-to-Weight-Watchers smile: Treatment of Childhood Obesity Will Do Little to Improve Adult Health Outcomes, Predicts Stanford Study.  

Yeah, no duh.  After the early "treatment" for obesity I received I developed anorexia nervosa, followed by a young adulthood spent in an obsessive relationship with food.  The cops got tired of me calling them to come over and settle domestic disputes between me and a half-gallon of chocolate ice cream.

I didn't get a healthy adult outcome from my early weight-loss intervention until I gave up trying to lose weight.  It was Dr. Linda Bacon's book, Health at Every Size, that convinced me.  It changed my life.  It reminded me of my body's athleticism, the joy I get from playing ball and moving my body in pleasurable ways, something I'd given up on long ago when I stopped playing games that emphasized how bouncy my flesh is.  

I've learned to love my body, something I never dreamed possible.  I feel compelled to help other fat people learn to love their bodies, too.  If you don't love your body, why would you care to feed it healthy, pleasurable foods and move it in healthy, pleasurable ways?  The best way to improve the overall health of human beings is not to tell them they're diseased but to teach them to love themselves.

There are lots of fat people in the world.  I don't have time to wrap my arms around all of you.  So let me use this blog as a virtual hug, to wrap my arms around every fat person's body and whisper into every fat person's ear, "loving yourself is the healthiest thing you can do."

Let's start a little online support group.

Hello.  My name is Becky.  I'm fat, and I'm healthy.  

I love my body.  You can learn to love your body too.  Don't worry.  It feels lonely to be ahead of your time, to fight for injustices early, before conventional society latches on to progressive ideas, but it's fun to fight the good fight.  Let's eradicate body hate in this lifetime.

I love medical sociologist Pattie Thomas' quote in her piece from Psychology Today:  

"History will not be kind to the AMA’s decision. Decisions made by privileged groups at the expense of subordinate groups for the profit of the few at the cost of the members of that group are usually doomed to ridicule in generations to come."  --Pattie Thomas, "What Do You Call a Fat Woman with a PhD?" Psychology Today, June 24, 2013

Let's speed up history's unkindness and get over our differences, shall we?  Fat-phobic friends, let's go swimming, or for a hike through the woods.  Let's play a game of kickball!  Instead of fighting with each other on the computer while sitting on our asses, let's get out in the world and let me show you the amazing things my fat body can do. 

I've learned to be proud of my bounce.  

#IAmNotADisease

Did I ever tell you the story about how my reproductive endocrinologist turned me away even though I had been to him the year before to have Katie, but this time he told me to come back when I lost twenty pounds, although I never did, so I never had more kids, and then, one day a few years later, when I got back from an excellent walk, when my body felt sweaty and vibrant and strong, I checked the mailbox and what was there but a newsletter from my community hospital with a picture of my reproductive endocrinologist and a blurb about how he, this slim, seemingly fit man, was recovering from a heart attack?

Yeah, so that happened.

I'm not saying it made me happy, the irony of a doctor scolding me to try to improve my health by losing weight when he himself a few years later faced a huge health crisis.  Not happy.  The English language doesn't do the feeling justice.  We must turn to the Germans for a word that expresses how I felt for a brief moment when I found out this doctor who had disappointed me so much, who I felt had discriminated against me for my size, this man who told me he refused to treat me and said he was doing so "for my own good health", when he proved himself a mere mortal the word describing how I felt was this: schadenfreude. I didn't feel good about his illness.  I felt bad for him.  But it felt a little good to feel bad for him.

I'm long over the schadenfreude I first felt when I read about my fat-phobic doctor's bad luck, but when I read reports that the AMA has joined the NIH in classifying "obesity" as a disease, despite their own panel of experts who studied the issue for a year advising them not to, I remind myself that doctors are mere mortals.

I'm not saying we should stop following all doctors' advice.  We need to think critically and choose wisely when we pick a doctor to work with us as an individual with complex needs.  This is the best advice I've read all day, from naturopathic doctor DeAun Nelson:

"I encourage every fat person reading this to have frank discussions with your physician. Fire physicians who do not comply with your health goals (if you can). Find physicians who understand that you are a person, and that your size should not dictate the quality of the treatment that your receive. Don’t let the financial interests of the diet, drug, and surgery industries affect how you are treated. Encourage your doctor to read Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon and start a discussion."

Now that I'm all fired up over this foolishness, I think it's time to cool off by pulling out the Slip N Slide:

#IAmNotADisease #FatAndFit #HAES #SlipNSlidesLoveAllSizes

Four Aron Franks

There's a scene in John Green's novel The Fault in Our Stars where the protagonist, Hazel, a teenager with terminal cancer, visits the Anne Frank House with her boyfriend, Augustus.  Before Hazel and Gus start making out in front of a crowd of tourists, Hazel notices an alphabetical list of names of victims of the Nazi extermination.  Next to Anne Frank's name is a listing of four boys named Aron Frank.  This part kills me:

The book was turned to the page with Anne Frank's name, but what got me about it was the fact that right beneath her name there were four Aron Franks. FOUR. Four Aron Franks without museums, without historical markers, without anyone to mourn them. I silently resolved to remember and pray for the four Aron Franks as long as I was around.

But of course it doesn't really kill me.  I am not dead yet.  But I will be some day, as these four Aron Franks are.  As Anne Frank is.  As John Green will be some day.  As my sweet six-year-old daughter will be some day, too.  All of us are mortal.  One thing I learned two years ago when my brother Pat died at the age of 49 of alcohol-induced liver failure is that there is no time to put off what we feel we must do before our time on this planet is over.  That's why I started writing.  Daily.  As often as I can.

Writing is not the same as publishing, I have learned.  When I was young and egomaniacal I thought surely I'd have published a book by now.  I loved to read.  I sheltered myself from the cruel world, inside my bedroom, reading, becoming friends with the characters in the novels.  They were fictional, but they understood me more than real people did.  I wanted to emulate my favorite authors, create works that could speak to others when I couldn't be physically present due to geographic boundaries or death.  I wanted to achieve immortality by creating stories that would survive my physical demise.  I wanted to be an Anne Frank and not an Aron Frank.

I am forty-two now.  I haven't published a book.  I've never been very good at goals.  Great at dreaming them up, but terrible at following through til the end.  It's so much easier for me to succumb to the moment and do as I please than it is for me to focus and do the boring work that must be done to achieve a goal.  I've produced two manuscripts now, one fiction, one a memoir, but I don't seem to have it in me to create an outstanding query letter or book proposal that I need to attract the attention of a literary agent.

And so I blog.  Just because I'm too lazy to find an agent, too allergic to marketing my work in a conventional way, doesn't mean I'm not writing.  And through this blog I'm able to connect with others despite our geographic boundaries.  I wonder, will this blog survive my death?  How long will my words and my stories live on in the digital world after my body has left the physical world?

Would my stories survive longer or connect with more people if they were sold by a big publishing house?  Or is blogging enough to satisfy my desire to connect with others?

The other day a friend of mine said something and it hurt my feelings.  I mentioned that Dr. Linda Bacon had shared one of my recent blog posts and that it hit over 200 page views in one day.  My friend's first reaction was not, "Wow!" or "Congratulations!" or "How exciting!" like it would be if he were a fictitious character inside my head and I were writing our dialogue in a story.  Instead he said the same thing my inner critic has been saying to me since I started this blog nearly two years ago:

"So do you get paid for each individual page view?"

"No, but van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime.  I'm a van Gogh of blogging," I argued and then I went for a walk in the park by myself to think about it.

Is writing worthy if it's unpaid?  

Yes.  It is.  Just as parenting is worthy even if it's the hardest unpaid work there is.  The rewards are beyond royalties.  Just yesterday, my daughter reminded me.

"It's crazy, but you wanna know what my favorite toy in the whole world is, Mom?" Katie asked me.

"What's your favorite toy in the whole world?" I asked.

"Books!  I love books more than anything," she exclaimed.

"I don't think that's crazy at all.  I completely understand.  I love to read too.  I'm happy you love books so much," I said.

I've gotta find some bloggers who write for young children so I can turn my kid onto the idea that the way stories are shared is evolving, that a good story doesn't have to be hardbound in order for you to enjoy it.  If you have any suggestions for a good blogger for kids, please let me know in the comments section.

I'm passing on my stories in my subtle way, the way I like to do it.  I don't have crowds of fans beating down my door or standing in long lines to have me sign their copies of my best-selling books.  I'm not getting rich off my art.  But would I really want that anyway?  Do I write to attract fans and a fat bank account, or do I write to share my love of a good story?  By publishing my stories on my blog and by passing on my love of reading to my daughter, I'm connecting in the best way I know.  Measuring my success in this way, I've already achieved my goal.

Happy Father's Day

Everything went smoothly.

I found my dad's current phone number and called him on Wednesday to make plans for Father's Day.  He said to consult my older sister, so I did.  She wanted us to come over to her house, so we met there Sunday for lunch.

The food was great.  Katie had fun playing with some awesome toys my sister, who has an estate sale business, gave her.  I enjoyed talking with my sister who, because of our busy daily lives, I see less often than I'd like to.  But here's the kicker:

Dad was nice.

Seriously.  Sure, he hogged the conversation like he does when he's in a good mood, but at least his stories were, for the most part, pretty funny and upbeat.  Sure, he complained a little about the loneliness of living by himself, but he balanced it with a statement about how he makes it a point to get out and stay active, even if it just means going to the library or going out to eat.  I felt bad for not shoveling his driveway last winter.

But I didn't feel bad the whole time like I used to when I was around my dad.  He didn't criticize me once.  He even asked me how my writing was going, and when I told him I hadn't found an agent and that my first manuscript is sitting at the back of my desk, he just smiled and didn't say anything judgy at all.  It was so weird.  What happened to the man who yelled at me and called me stupid when I told him I was taking a part-time job at the library where he claims I'd never "make any money" as if slinging arts and information isn't a worthy undertaking?  He was not there Sunday at my sister's kitchen table.  This guy was happy.  Grateful to spend an afternoon with his two daughters, his son-in-law who kept golf on the TV all afternoon for him, and his granddaughter who looks so much like how he remembers me when I was her age.

Will had to work, so when he got home I told him about how oddly upbeat my dad had been.  Will said, "Well, I guess that means it's time to forgive him."

"What?  No!  But I don't waaaaant to forgive him," I whined like I really was Katie's age.

And that's just it, my friends.  Forgiveness is not about the other person.  Forgive others for yourself.  When I learn to forgive my dad fully, I'll feel so much better.  Grudges are heavy burdens on my already sagging shoulders.  I've got to learn to let go of past trauma.  We're all here just trying our best.  Even Dad.

The Owner's Manual

I caught our six-year-old reading the owner's manual to her booster seat.  Will was driving.  I was in the passenger's seat.  Katie was in the back.  I looked into the mirror over my visor and I could see Katie was reading something, but I couldn't make out what it was.

"What are you reading, Punk?" I asked.

Katie looked up at my visor mirror and caught my eye.  "The owner's manual to my booster seat."

"Oh yeah?  Why are you reading that?" I asked, a terrible thing for a librarian-mother to ask a child, but it was already out of my mouth before I realized how negative it sounded.  

I can't stand to read manuals of any kind.  When I get something new I fiddle around with it until I know how it works.  If I can't figure it out myself, I ask for help from someone else.  As a last resort I might consult the manual if I'm desperate, but I've been known to simply chuck something into the back of my closet before consulting the owner's manual.

"Because it's interesting!" Katie exclaimed.

I smiled like I did the time when she was three and woke me up at six in the morning to ask if I'd make her some broccoli.  Our sweet, strange child.

Now, Katie isn't always such a goody two-shoes.  Most days she's happy to play video games until she gets a headache and eat candy until she gets heartburn.  It's not all reading owner's manuals and eating broccoli with her.  But when it is, it's hard for me to keep a straight face.

"What's so interesting about the owner's manual to your booster seat?" I asked.

"Well, it tells you how to build it!  And it has lots of pictures of kids!  Babies and big kids like me!  And I can read it in English or flip it over and read it in Spanish!"

"How do you know how to read Spanish?" I asked.

"Well, if I read this maybe when school starts Mateo will be in my class again and I can tell him what I read and he can translate it into bilingual for me!" She said, looking back down.  

I could hear a page turn as I watched our funny kid re-focus on the owner's manual.

Six of Clubs

Will, Katie, and I found ourselves in the neighborhood, so we popped inside Planet Sub, one of our favorite sub shops.  We placed our order and sat at a booth to color while we waited for our dinner.  I solved a maze by doing it backward and when I bragged about my feat Katie said that you are not supposed to do it backwards.  I said nuh-uh and flipped the sheet over to color a whale grey with orange polka dots.

The woman who took our order brought our food to the table.  We thanked her.  She smiled and nodded her head.  She turned around to head back to the counter without picking up the six of clubs, the card she had given us when we paid and got our receipt.  Instead of asking for names, they hand you a card from a deck and then that particular card is linked to your specific order.  I set the card aside and we ate our meal heartily.  Delicious.  Katie and Will split a meatball sub. I had a tempeh reuben.  We split some broccoli cheese soup.  Yum.

We finished eating and began to clean up after ourselves, Will very neatly stacking our trash on the plastic tray and carrying it to the trash can.  I picked up the six of clubs and asked Katie if she wanted to take it to the counter and hand it to the employee while I stood back at the table and watched.

"Sure!" she said with sweet eagerness.  She's usually shy around adults she doesn't know, a side-effect of all the stranger danger talk she's heard.  Which is good.  I don't want her to approach strangers unless one of her caretakers is watching her.  In some ways she's growing up so fast.  She seems so mature.  But she's only six.  She still needs guidance.

I stood back and watched.  Katie walked in a straight line up to the counter, paused for a moment, then approached the woman, who smiled brightly and said something I couldn't hear.  Katie nodded her head as if she were replying, but I couldn't hear it.  She turned around, beaming, and walked briskly back to me.

"Thanks, Punk," I said, patting her back.

"Mom," Katie said out of the side of her mouth in a quiet voice, "I think she thought I was a dwarf grownup."

"Oh yeah?" I smiled so big it felt like my cheeks were cracking.  I was trying so hard not to laugh.

Katie was serious.  I could tell she felt so big, pretending she's a grownup of short stature, out in the world, doing normal, grownup things.