I wasn’t exactly a chubby kid. I wasn’t a complete little dumpling. If I look back at photos of myself at age 4, or 7, or 10, I don’t see a fat little girl. Neither do I see a delicate, birdlike child. Nope, I was a “solid” kid. Nothing wrong with that, exactly.

I come from a family that likes to eat. Food was the centerpiece of every family occasion. Maybe your family was the same way–I don’t think for a minute I come from the only family like this. But we were pretty darned good at it and still are.

My grandmother was an incredible cook. Every Sunday dinner at her house was a feast. The tradition continued at my mother’s table as well. Beyond meals, there were the other food occasions: Saturday night sundaes in front of the TV spring to mind, but there were Friday night ice cream cones at the local dairy store. Come to think of it, ice cream figured prominently because there were very few times when we passed the Tas-T-Freeze without stopping in. Of course the ice cream cone treat was a bribe for “being good.” Apparently we were very good children.

I guess I was a fairly active kid–clumsy but active: we were not permitted to lay around in our pajamas and watch Saturday morning cartoons like some of the other neighborhood kids. We had chores, even from a very young age, and then we were sent out to play. In those pre-computer and video games days, we rode bicycles, fell out of trees, played make believe games and such. Even in winter, we were outdoors quite a bit; there was a small (really small) hill (well, “embankment” is probably a more accurate term) where were sledded. We build snowmen, snow “forts” and all that..

My mother was, still is, Queen of the Clean Plate Club. And she did not care if you didn’t like what was put before you. You ate it. I learned early on to eat food I didn’t like. My little brother was smarter–rather than learn to eat it, he learned to gag. He gagged on egg yolks and green peppers and a million other things. Mom never could get past the gagging sounds so Little Brother got special dispensations. Not me. I ate what didn’t like and I ate when I wasn’t hungry. She was strict and she was scary and I cleaned my damn plate.

Let me be clear. I spent years (really YEARS) blaming Mom for my weight problems. I’ve been to therapy. I don’t blame her any longer. I’ve had ample time to solve the problems myself. It will sound like I’m blaming–sometimes a little bitterness creeps back in, but I’m really just explaining. Back to my story:

I’ve looked at the pictures. I wasn’t a fat kid. Funny thing though, even though I wasn’t a fat kid, I felt like a fat kid. I thought I was a fat kid. I spent some time on this in therapy a few years ago and we discovered that I do not remember a time when I did not feel like a fat kid. Through a series of events which stayed in my memory, those feelings were reinforced. For example, when I was about 4, I was learning to write my name but I could not get the letters in the right order. Dad teased me by telling me that the way I was spelling it, it spelled “F-A-T.” I can remember quite clearly feeling shame about that.

In second or third grade, we were all taken to the nurse’s office and weighed–in front of each other. I weighed about 10 pounds more than most of the other girls in the class. I was not the tallest, but I think the second tallest kid in the class but of course that didn’t matter. They called me “Fatty, Fatty” for weeks. Oh, and my ears stick out–so pretty soon I was ‘Dumbo.”

“Hey, Dumbo, where’s your trunk?”

From a very early age, I learned to equate food with love: Grandma showed her love with specially decorated birthday cakes, fresh-baked bread, a perpetually full cookie jar (her peanut butter cookies were legendary), and her beautifully prepared Sunday dinners. Mom showed her love by her perpetual vigilance as to proper nutrition, portion size notwithstanding. Dad showed his love with the ice cream. Food=Love. Plain and simple.

But it’s more complex than that isn’t it? Food doesn’t just equal love. There was a fancy dinner for every gathering so Food=Family and Food=Celebration. When I was sad or disappointed, Grandma was there was a giant slab of devil’s food cake; when I was sick, Mom was there was there with a bowl of soup so Food=Comfort. When we were good, we got ice cream or some other treat so Food=Reward.

The darker side of this equation: Food=Control. My mother with her clean plate rule–she was relentless then and she still is. I watch her with her grandchildren and she hasn’t changed on bit. She fills a plate that no kid could possibly finish–especially given the richness of her food–and then gets all strict with the kids until they finish it all. I watched one of them literally eat until he could hold no more, walk to the front porch and vomit on himself. He just couldn’t hold anymore. She doesn’t get it.

That was my childhood.