what do I say? (TW for fat hatred)

My parents just returned yesterday from a week-and-then-some trip to Yellowstone with my maternal grandmother. I picked them up from the airport around 4:30 PM. A few initial pleasantries got us out of the airport, but once we hit the highway, the conversation turned to dinner.

Dad: "What do you want to eat for dinner, Mom?"

Grandmother: "I don't even...all we do is talk about food! Where do you want to go, what do you want, blah blah blah. All we did the whole time was eat and talk about food! I don't want to talk about food."

(Background: My mother and father are fat. I am fat. My grandmother is not. She is one of the very few people in family who are not fat. My mother, her sisters, my cousins - almost everyone except my grandmother is fat.)

My mother is getting that tense thing in the back of her neck. I am driving, and she's in the back seat, but I can feel it, because I do it, too.



Dad: "We did eat a lot, didn't we? I think it was three times a day!" He tries to laugh a little bit.

Mom: "Well I am going to want dinner. You don't have to eat. It's not like I am forcing you to eat."

There is silence for a while, after which point my grandmother concedes that she will feel like eating by the time we get back to their house, food is prepared, etc.

We return to the house, unload the car, and sit down to chat for a while before my mom heads off to the store to get food - since they've been out of town for over a week, there is not much in the fridge. She is sidetracked by my grandmother trying to explain her previous frustration.

It doesn't all bear repeating. My grandmother seems to think that fat people just don't know what to do - if they knew what to do, then they would do it, and they wouldn't be fat anymore.

"You have to change your mindset," she said. "All you do is eat, eat, eat, and talk about food. Instead of thinking, "I want that," you need to think, "I don't need it. No, thank you." Aunt so-and-so is on a diet where she only eats an apple for lunch. Don't think about that hamburger that you could have. You don't need it."

My parents have been doing what I find to be a frighteningly unhealthy fad diet for the past few months. (One that includes meals not much bigger than an apple.)

"We were on vacation. We don't normally eat like that."

My grandmother says she hasn't had a cookie in five years, my mom says she hasn't had one in six months, it goes back and forth like that.

The bottom of this ugly little exchange is this: my grandma doesn't believe her. She doesn't believe that someone could restrict, and follow all of the stupid advice, and take the pills and count everything and still be fat. It doesn't fit her experience, because she's not fat and never has been.

This is all very difficult to listen to, but I have learned that getting up and leaving usually causes more drama than staring at my hands. So I stare at my hands, I stare at the imperfections in the glass tabletop, I stare out the window at a potted plant that has fallen onto its side.

My mother is talking about how tired she is of her not-too-effective fad diet. She says she is just going to try to eat healthy, and in moderation, with some occasional indulgences.

Grandma takes issue with that.

Mom says, "If you're going to tell me that I can't have a piece of cake once in a while, that if I will always be fat if I do, then guess what? I am just going to be fat. It's not worth it. Life is too short."

At which point I think I should cheer, and hug her, and I would if I could speak and move through the water that separates me from this conversation, from this angst and pain and unhealed wounds, picked at again.

A few years ago we were at a cousin's wedding. My mom was dealing with a back injury and wasn't as mobile as she would have been otherwise. She was walking, but not more than she needed to. When she got up to get a plate for the buffet, my grandmother remarked, "Don't seem to have any trouble walking to the food!" When my mom returned to the table it was, "Are you sure that plate's not too heavy?"

So this isn't new, but triggers don't have to be surprising - sometimes they are mundane and repeated and worn-out and boring, but they still work.

I decide that I need to leave, and that it needs to be a non-event, and I breathe and think of the words and plan them out. "I have homework. I should go." There is some goodbye-ing and some hugging, and them I am free, out into the hot and sticky evening, the sun melting towards the trees that almost encircle the house.

My mom is behind me, out the door, finally headed to do the dinner shopping. I end up going with her. As we wander through the aisles, she wants to know - was she out of line? What was she supposed to say? Is she just supposed to not eat?

And I don't know what to say, really. We're picking out bread, and I don't know how to explain the theory and the culture and the propoganda and the misunderstanding and the cruelty and that's it's OK to be who you are - that's not something I'm supposed to have to tell my mother, or something she would believe if I did.

I settle for a bit of "Grandma is self-centered and doesn't understand other people's experiences."

I feel empty, though. I feel defeated. I feel powerless. That's not new, either.