My Skinny Self

My daughter called last night. She was fired from her job and, certainly, it was one she needed firing from. It is best for her, a talented physical trainer, to not rely on a job at the counter of a pizza joint, organic pizza or not,

On top of it, she has a cold. A bad one. So, all around, she needed her Mommy and decided to come up even though it would be only over night.

She arrived at about seven in the evening. I took her out to a Chinese buffet/Mongolian grill where she ate mostly raw vegetables and fish. I took a few things in small quantities I should not have, would normally not have, and left most of what I took, eating a few bites, enjoying, sometimes, the flavour and /or texture and leaving the rest. After a quick trip to the grocery for eggs and milk, my wife treated her for her cold, my daughter laying on her back, on the couch, acupuncture needles erupting from her stomach and legs like sparse, corse hairs. After, her backed was cupped to relieve her congestion. All this after a listen through a stethoscope to make sure she was not about to have pneumonia.

Later that evening, me on my laptop, Lee on hers and my daughter on hers, she looks at us and says, “Is this what we’re going to do?”

It’s a Sunday night, 10:30. What to do with work the next day? With a daughter with the flu?

When she calls, she complains because we are always out, never home. “Are you out with your friends again?” Many of my friends are her age or thereabouts and this appears to upset, or, perhaps, just confuse her. She asks me where her mother is. She did not answer her phone. Out, I answer. Without you? Why?

We have lives.

But you didn’t when you lived in Miami.

Yes, I know. That’s why we like it here so much better.

So now, late on a Sunday night, we are relaxed, quiet and now, now she wants us to have a life.



The next day, she is treated again in Lee’s office. Then we take her to a gentleman for Live Blood Cell Analysis. He takes a drop of blood, looks at it in a scanning microscope and recommends olive leaf, black cherry extract and vitamin e as well as a way to drop some stress besides exercise.

My daughter is a dancer and trainer. Athletic, her body fat is about five percent. Low for a female, even for an athletic one.

While the chemist is talking with her, I notice an body fat analysis machine. An impedance model made by a company with an excellent reputation for medical devices. An Omron. The same company that makes my pedometer. I pick it up finding it easy to figure out: press the button for height/feet and it changes. Press for height/inches and it changes. Gender and age was the same. Hold he handles and press the ‘start’ button with your thumb. It took me less than half a minute and, of course, I expected ominous, horrific results.

Friday evening: Craig tells me I’m thin. He tells me even since my birthday, I have gotten thinner. I say I’m working on it. He answers that I am past working on it. I take this as a compliment, but, trust Craig as I do, still cannot believe it.

I mention this in an email thread from/to a WW friend in Maryland. Wulf, my twin, she of the same hight/weight/birthday/sci-fi collection/proclivities/etc… and she tells me I should believe him.

And, she continues, if I don’t believe him, how about my friends which whom I go to Playalinda Beach? Do they tell me that? I should believe them.

Yes, I say, they do. And I don’t.

And here I am, two days later, with an Omron Body Fat Analyzer in my hands and it is calculating, calculating, calculating… It seems to take longer than setting it up and it reads, finally, sixteen percent. What?

Sixteen percent. The chemist, Richard, he of the Natural Foods Coop, Café, Naturapathic School says he is not surprised and it is quite accurate.

What’s normal, I ask. Fifteen to eighteen percent is considered low to high normal for a guy.

Sixteen percent. I am doing something right. Maybe the belly and chest are in my imagination. (Evanne says everyone loves boobs. I still think they look better on her than me.) Maybe a cruel trick of heredity but, in any case, this is incontrovertible. I have been wrong.

The diet changes, exercise, attitude – it has all worked despite my seeing otherwise. I have worked for these results but did not believe them possible. I have been working, extending continuous effort for something I did not actually, in any way, believe I would accomplish. And then, there it is. Here it is in front of me and I am amazed. As though it dropped from the sky, I am amazed.

In a way, my success leaves me not knowing what to do. I succeeded? How is that? Just through hard work and dedication?

What else will I be surprised at success in? Selling a book? Producing a play? Can I do these things even if I do not believe I can? Is belief a necessary part of work? Do I need to believe to succeed? It would appear as not.

And despite the evidence, in the face of so much proof, why is it I believe I cannot?
My skinny self wants to know.