In 1942, when I was seven, I became listless, ran a slight fever and had no appetite. I was eventually diagnosed with tuberculosis and put to bed where I stayed for a year, except for treatments with a sun lamp and fresh air and to go downstairs for an occasional dinner. I wasn't hungry and didn't want to eat and my parents were desperate to encourage me to gain weight. I remember a spectrum of their incentives, from offering me a dollar (which was a lot more money in 1942) for every pound I could gain, to making me stay at the table long after dinner was over until I had finished everything on my plate. A stubborn little boy, I put my sandwiches for lunch down behind the books in my bookshelf and surreptitiously poured the eggnogs my mother made for me down the bathroom sink. She quickly caught on; she could smell the nutmeg in the bathroom. I posit now - especially since my sister is a psychotherapist in eating disorders - that I was probably anorexic, long before that malady had a recognized name.
Anorexia, my sister tells me, is always about control in an environment where her client has little other control, and is sometimes a result of sexual abuse. Another curious thing about my childhood is that I have no memories before that time in my life, another sign of blocking out something too horrible to remember. During many years of therapy, my shrink and I tried on the theory that my brother, eight years my senior, overflowing with hormones and with whom I shared a room, had sexually abused me. But like trying on a coat one thinks of buying that doesn't fit, this theory never felt right to me. (My brother died many years ago.)
Finally, a child specialist here in Baltimore, urged my parents to get me up and let me be a normal eight-year old kid. They still worried about my weight but I gradually gained some pounds and some height until by the time I was in high school, at 6'1", I weighed 145 pounds. Even two years in the Army didn't add any weight to my skinny, rib-showing body. Somewhere during a student tour of Europe when I was in college, I started smoking - like so many who do, I wanted to be like the others on the tour - and my weight stalled at 145 until I was 37, when I gave up (for the final time) the nasty cigarette habit. Suddenly, food was no longer just sustenance, to be stopped when I was no longer hungry, but I actually tasted it, for the first time in my life. And I liked the tastes. I immediately gained 30 pounds in the next six months.
How ludicrous it seems that now, here toward the end of my life, I'm trying desperately to lose weight when at the beginning, others were frantic for me to gain it. And how odd that I should be writing two blogs, one devoted to rich recipes filled with butter and cream - recipes that got me here - and the other chronicling my meager meals without the very ingredients I espouse in my other forum. Life is truly strange. Or maybe it's just me.
But the program works. I've lost 22 pounds since the Fourth of July.
Stay tuned.
