My mother was, like me, a chubby child. Thick in the cold-country way (German, Irish, English) we both were soft and adorable girls; “delicate” was never the word of choice, when it came to describing us.
I grew up to type, thick set and imposing and generally overweight, but even when I was at my thinnest I was still 145 pounds and zaftig.
Mother? She hit her teens and slimmed down to super-model proportions. She was a knock-out. Then she hit her mid 20s and started looking normal again.
I say “normal” because I don’t think that run of hyper-skinny in her teens and early 20s was natural. In fact, I’m going on record to say I think mother was bulimic.
She’s dead now so there is no way, ever, to prove this theory. But there is the matter of my teeth.
That’s not the strange segue it seems. My teeth are rock solid: strong roots and thick enamel and good for another forty years. In this I take after everyone in the family on my mother’s side (she told me once I got her father’s teeth, and who am I to argue?). Except, strangely, Mother herself. She had nearly all her teeth pulled by the time she was 20.
She told everyone that it was because she drank too much Coke, but damn, so did that whole clan. They were Southerners, and if they weren’t sucking on Cocoa Cola they were drowning in sweet tea. No, it wasn’t the Coke. It wasn’t anything that made sense, really, and most everyone in the family agrees with that. Sue’s rotten teeth were a mystery.
I don’t think it’s that much a mystery given some facts of my mother’s history, such as she started at an exclusive upscale all-girls school when she was about 14, was in constant and fierce competition with her seemingly perfect older sister, suffered early on from bi-polar disorder (not that it was diagnosed until decades later), and had a crushing sense of worthlessness that haunted her even during manic episodes. Knowing all of that, I think it is very likely she became bulimic in her teens. Throwing up all the time will ruin your teeth faster than anything else, something she would not have realized until too late. And knowing Mother, she would have been one stellar bulimic. She was nothing if not a perfectionist.
This also explains some of her behavior later in life, when she was obsessed about her weight gain but never, ever went on the crazy fad diets that ruled the 70s and 80s. Her holy grail was “healthy weight loss” which, honestly, always struck me as strange given her level of obsessiveness about her weight. Combining that with her mental disorder and lack of self-esteem, it seemed to me she was a perfect candidate for an eating disorder.
And she probably was.
It doesn’t seem odd to me that she would stop being a bulimic by sheer force of will, then spend the rest of her life fighting her weight gain without ever going down that road again. Will power was mother’s super power, really, and if she had ever harnessed it we would have world peace and a pound of chocolate for all. Instead it led her down dangerous alleys like bulimia.
True, I don’t have proof. But I’ve discussed this theory with a couple of family members who knew her best, and they were shocked and appalled but in total agreement with me.
My mother, the stealth bulimic. Who knew?
No one but her.