Growing Up in a Fat House

My father was of average weight. My mother was very heavy. I didn't really notice how heavy, though, until I was a teenager.

As a child I remember snippets of weight related incidents. I remember one morning my mother being very happy. She was singing while making breakfast. I asked my father why mom was in such a good mood. His reply was a criptic "she's just happy because of what she saw on the scale this morning". It was probably the first time I understood that my mother was not happy with how much she weighed.

Another remembrance: My mother started driving us to school every morning. After riding a school bus for the first 5 years of my academic career I was not sorry in the least for our sudden good fortune. The reason for the rides was not really discussed, but I figured out that my mother was going to a weight loss clinic every morning for a shot and weigh in. I have no idea what was in the shot and I didn't ask. Excess weight was not talked about in our house.

Once I hit my teens I was all too consciously aware of how heavy my mother really was. I agonized over it. I felt personally picked on. I would look around at other "normal weight" mothers and think to myself that their kids had no idea what I was dealing with. When I would find another woman whose weight was close to my own mother's weight I would feel a kinship with her children and silently think "I know what you're going through, buddy." One particularly horrifying day I remember being in a store with my mother and seeing some other kids from my school come in. I was so afraid that they would figure out that my mother was the fat lady that I hid from her. That day is horrifying in my memory because I now know how horrible I was. I'm ashamed of myself.

In short I was a self-centered, self-conscious, prick of a teenager. I thought it was all about me. Now that I find myself in a similar situation in struggling with my weight I feel ashamed and sick at heart for the heartless thoughts and feelings I had while growing up. I know now how despairing feelings come with carrying all that extra weight and not being able to do a thing about it.