Fat Woman Walking

Photo on left: The author and her grandmother, June 5, 1968, just before she left for L.A. Photo on right: The author's mother ____________________ I have a complicated relationship with my late mother. I spent most of my youth in my grandparents’ custody, for my time with Mother had been sporadic and haphazard – life, in her house, often filled with drama, domestic violence (on her part; she married nice men), and insecurity. Mother was smart, beautiful, artistically talented, and sweet – when she was sober. When she was drinking – which was most of the time – she was unstable, mean, and slurry. It was like she was speaking another language, which, in a sense, she was: the language of drink. The language of drink is a mish-mosh of incoherence and mispronunciation with a good dose of anger. Woe-be-onto-me if I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me. She never hit me – she saved that for her men – but she had a way of making me feel as if I were the

The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational. ~A. N. Wilson Meet my appetite: The voracious monster and – The Empty Yawning Chasm. If left unchecked, The Chasm will create havoc. Much of my life has been spent staving it off, and woe-be-onto-me should I ignore its first signs. The Chasm retains a tight leash on me, reminding me of the numerous impulses within to grab the first thing at hand, usually a fatty crunchy carb or fast food, typically fried in grease. (An aside: Last week, while on my walk, I slipped, almost landing on my ass, on a smelly grease stain deposited by Chick-fil-A in the alleyway behind its property – think about that as you take your next bite of its classic chicken sandwich. How that stuff must grease up one’s colon like a colonoscopy prep – we oldsters think a lot about such connections.) I have been told that humans living in First World Countries have never experienced gut-wrenching hunger