Winter: Mo
The author, age 15, and her grandmother Mo _______________________ After my grandmother Mo died, I inherited her diaries, sporadic histories of her life, varying from when she was a teenager to her golden years. What I discovered surprised me: even in her late 70’s and early 80’s, Mo was obsessed with her weight. She weighed herself daily and recorded the number, typically around 140, perhaps slightly chunky for her 5-foot height. If she lost weight or remained the same, she had a good day, but if she gained, her day was shot – and she was miserable and complained bitterly in her diary and planned starvation strategies for that day to shed it. Sound familiar? At first, I was surprised because I never thought of Mo as being fat or even fat-obsessive – it seemed to me that her weight never varied. Sure, when she was younger, she was slimmer than when I knew her, but wasn’t that the natural order of the world? After all, she bore and raised four children and was raising...