Too Heavy

Two and a half months before her ninth birthday, Quinn is four feet and two inches tall. She weighs sixty-six pounds. Her eyesight is excellent, her hearing is clear. She has no known allergies or illnesses. She eats vegetables, drinks milk, consumes enough protein, and always wears a helmet. She still rides in her booster seat. She gets enough sleep. Her heart beats, her legs are strong, her balance is good. At the end of her yearly check-up the other day, Quinn’s doctor asked her, and me, if we had any questions. Other than expressing concern that she was losing her freckles (including the tiny pink star she was born with on the bridge of her nose), Quinn asked no questions and there were none from me. “Well,” Dr. Parker said, “you are a healthy girl!” Good job, she seemed to say. She smiled and told us she’d see us in a year.

Once we were in the car headed home, I caught Quinn in the rearview mirror. I congratulated her on the good report from the doctor. “Way to go, Buddy,” I said. I thought too of her final report card which we'd also just received: her teacher reported that Quinn met all the benchmarks, in every subject and category, and she “exceeded” them in reading and math. 

“How do you feel about it all? You’ve had a great year!” Instead of the beaming pride I imagined she would feel, Quinn’s eyes filled up. “Am I too heavy?” she asked, as she looked away, embarrassed, and started to cry.

And so, here we are. The end of second grade. My daughter is eight years old. She is healthy, and smart, and funny, and kind, and powerful, and beautiful. And yet.

The doctor had just said she was healthy, I reminded her. Her body is doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing, I tried to assure her, but still her worry mounted. I asked her why she would think that she was too heavy, wanting to hear her thoughts, even though I dreaded hearing them. She told me she is heavier than all of her friends. She knew their weights and knew her own. I was stunned by this, and asked why she knew. “Well, one day at recess,” she explained, “we were on the teeter-totter…” 

I imagined the scene: little girls all gathered around, sizing each other up, each taking her turn to step up and be measured against the others, the combinations changing again and again as they narrowed in on who weighted the bar most often. “How much do you weigh?” one of them asked Quinn in exaggerated surprise that day, “you’re so heavy!” 

In her telling of this story, Quinn names each of her “friends.” There is one, of course, leading this activity. At the time she was asked this question, how much do you weigh, a question that she didn't feel she could question, Quinn recalls vividly that she weighed fifty-nine pounds. In retelling it, to me, her worry turns to panic. “What am I going to tell people now when they ask me how much I weigh? Now I weigh sixty-six pounds!”

I pulled off the road so I could turn and look at her directly—my amazing daughter, still small enough to ride in a booster seat, in tears over her weight. It is so much sooner than I thought we would have this talk, and though I’ve imagined it since she was a toddler, smiling at herself in the mirror, I haven’t practiced, so I just told her anything I could think of to bolster her—that each person’s weight is made up of all the things that make a body: strong muscles and bones and healthy organs, a big brain…that her body is growing and doing all the things it is supposed to do, and because her body is so strong, she is able to do all the things she loves to do—ski and swim and bike, climb “the climbing tree,” and run the Mad Dash… What I didn’t tell her is that I live in fear of her not loving herself because I’ve watched girls starve themselves for this, and in one case, nearly to death.

Instead I told her that every body is different, and I remind her that since she was young enough to speak, we’ve told her that we don’t comment on how people look, unless we’re telling them they look beautiful. I remind her of this in a probably not-so-subtle attempt to draw her attention to the fact that her “friend” who embarrassed her, and made her doubt herself, wasn’t being very nice. And the closest I get to saying what I really want to say—which is something along the lines of “Why don’t you tell So-and-so to shut the fuck up, mind her own business, and stop building herself up by putting everyone else down”—is this: I can’t tell you who to be friends with, but I hope you’ll choose people who make you feel good about yourself, because friends should lift you up. 

This year I’ve been working to scale back on making suggestions when Quinn has come home upset about a situation with a friend. I’ve started, instead, to just remind her I believe in her, in hopes she’ll believe in herself. “You have all the tools,” I will say, and I mean it. Fortunately some of the tools she has are friends with whom she can be entirely herself, entirely at ease in her own skin, because she is loved, as is, for being exactly who she is.

At the beginning of the school year, Quinn and her classmates painted self portraits, and they did so again at the end of the year. In her first, she sees herself as I saw her then too—serious as she began the new year, waiting to see how it would all unfold. 

And at the end, I see her as she sees herself again: more relaxed, allowing herself a smile.  

On the last day of second grade, Quinn and her classmates moved around their classroom writing notes to each other on their self-portraits—keepsakes of their time together the past two years with Mrs Burns. Next year, they disperse to other classrooms and new classmates. Each of the notes written on Quinn’s card is sweet: you are kind, you are smart, you are helpful, you are caring.  

But one of them stands out: “Your smile makes me happy.” I wish I could surround her with friends like that—people who see her and feel happiness when she is happy. That’s what real friends do.

This year we had a speaker come to our school to talk to the students about self-image, self-esteem, social media, sex. She met with kids and then met with our staff separately, and one of the things she said that has stuck with me is this: “When you have something to say that they need to hear, just keep talking…even if it seems like they aren’t listening, just keep talking because they cannot un-hear what you have said.” Quinn didn’t say much while I talked on the side of the road in our idling car after her doctor’s appointment, but she seemed to be listening. I don’t know if she could sense how urgent it all seemed to me, and I don’t even know if that would’ve been good or bad, but second grade feels too early for this conversation, it feels too heavy. And yet maybe early is key. Maybe we are doing the site work right now, and maybe from here we’ll build the foundation. Maybe if we keep leveling and checking for square, taking our time, working with care and confidence, then eventually we can raise her up—tall, proud, strong. 

I imagine the scene: two girls step up to the teeter-totter. Each takes her seat and grabs the handle. One bends her knees, uses her strength, lifts the other up. There is a pause and then she pushes off, sending herself high. Up and down, constant motion, both are smiling.