Sins of the Mother
By Melissa Hogarty
@savoredgrace
A ripping noise startles me when I crouch down to pick up my sneakers from the living room floor. Just as I realize that the back of my right thigh is free and cold, I hear my mom gasp behind me.
“Oh, Melissa,” she says in a voice dripping with disappointment and disgust.
She tears me a new one, gouging a hole larger than the one on my backside, one harder to repair in my teenage heart. The words flow from her mouth like the vomit that would one day flow from mine—once she gets started, she cannot stop. She speaks from her confusion and fear about my shape and size, telling me that I have busted through my pants, that I’ve been bursting at the seams for weeks, her colorful language pricking at the backs of my eyelids as she trails behind me.
“Go change, quick!” she urges, shooing me up the stairs. I climb the steps, face flaming, trying to hold my hands over the loose threads that expose my days-of-the-week underwear. I move slowly. I am mourning the loss of my favorite jeans, which flare wide below the knees and feature a silver, glittery racing stripe down the outer seams. These jeans make me think of my trip to Germany and of a boy I like who once commented on them. But now they also remind me that I am ballooning out of proportion. I suppose I have been fooling no one with my fashion sense.
I have known for a long time that I am bigger than most of the girls in my high school; my love of sports is inversely correlated with my love of chocolate chip cookies. But for the first time, I wonder whether my size matters. Whether I am lovable.
I make a vow: never eat seconds. Never eat dessert. Only drink water.
When I tell my mother I am going on a diet, she manages to both scoff and look pleased at the same time. When the diet digs in its claws, turning viciously from an exercise in moderation into a strangling need to control everything, she doesn’t notice.
***
“Where has all the honey gone?” I ask in dismay, holding up the bottle I opened only three days ago. It is now half-empty, and I can think of no logical reason the honey would disappear so quickly.
I look across the kitchen to my children, who are waiting for me to prepare their breakfasts. My son keeps his back turned as he says, “I don’t know. Maybe Dad used it.” I squint my eyes at him, debating whether to press further.
“Are you telling me the truth?” I ask the question quietly, trying to imbue my voice with gravity and forgiveness at the same time.
“Well …” he starts haltingly as he turns around. When he admits that he has been eating the honey, squirting it straight into his mouth, I press my lips into a flat line to suppress a groan. This is not the first time I have caught him taking something without permission, sneaking around to nab quarters and Legos and sweets. I am not surprised—I’m not even angry. Instead, I feel helpless to stop this cycle.
“Buddy, honey is an ingredient, a condiment. We eat it together with other foods, like granola and tea. It’s not good for your body to eat honey all by itself. And you can’t take things that aren’t yours just because you want them.” He nods, as he always does when I discover his thievery. I fish around for a consequence that might matter to him, though I despair of ever training him to delay gratification, to content himself with less. After all, how can I teach him what I cannot model?
As I drizzle a thin stream of honey into my daughters’ bowls, I tell him, “You will have to eat your yogurt and granola without honey this morning. You already ate the honey that should have gone into your breakfast.” His face immediately crumples, and he walks away with his head hanging low.
***
“I want cheese crackers for snack!” my son proclaims as he races down the stairs two at a time.
I call after him, shifting my toddler on my hip. “We don’t have any more. Pick something else.”
He wheels around, peering up with anxious eyes. “What? You ate them all?” I can’t possibly count the number of times he has had to ask this question. You ate all the crackers—popcorn—cookies—Klondikes? But I wanted some, too!
I shrug and try to sound authoritative instead of defensive as I look down at him from the landing. “I had a snack during quiet time. Mommy is allowed to have a snack.” But I am covering for myself, and he knows it. Before quiet time started, there were six packs of crackers … and now there are zero.
Shame swims through my gut, even though I know shame is a useless emotion. I let it swirl there heavily.
I am a word problem that cannot be solved. If Mommy buys groceries on Monday and serves leftovers on Tuesday, what is the statistical probability that your favorite snack will still be in the pantry on Wednesday? If quiet time lasts two hours and Mommy watches one movie and folds two loads of laundry, how many calories will she consume when no one is looking?
***
When my son was a few months old, I discovered the story of a blogger who fought her way out of an eating disorder after she became a mother. From her I learned that motherhood is supposed to be enough. The act of sustaining someone else’s life, the physical labor of training my babies to make healthy choices and grow into emotionally competent adults—these noble pursuits should turn me away from years of broken thinking and perilous habits.
Heaven knows I tried to get it together. It was easy to stop talking negatively about my body in front of them, to swallow the kinds of judgments young children should never hear: I look so fat today … ugh, what flabby thighs. Much harder to surrender was the habit of eating my feelings.
From me, my son didn’t learn that size matters, that control will make him feel whole. Instead he witnessed what it looks like when Mommy has a craving. When Mommy takes and she takes. I suppose I’ve never fooled him—not when I said I was hungry, and not when I lied about how long ago we bought the ice cream. He saw right through me. He noticed. And he learned that it was okay to steal something if you really want it, because good things do not always come to those who wait.
In the book of John, the disciples happen upon a blind man, and they turn to their teacher and friend Jesus to ask, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” (John 9:2). I was a teenager when I first encountered this appalling scene. What kind of God would punish children for their parents’ mistakes? Shouldn’t children have the opportunity to grow up unencumbered by someone else’s damage?
But what if God isn’t the one inflicting this pain? What if it is just parents, generation after generation? What if my sins have blinded my children, spiritually if not literally?
I thought I was doing everything I could—everything I saw other eating disorder sufferers share in open letters to their children. The problem is, I was looking in the wrong direction. I spent my energy trying desperately to teach my children that their bodies (and anyone else’s) are worthy of respect and joy, when what I should have been teaching them is how to be satisfied, how to wait on the Lord.
“You are enough,” I wish I could tell my son. “Let’s stop this. I love you more than this stupid hamster wheel. I love you more than cookies.”
***
“It’s after lunch—can I eat my candy?” my son begs, hopping up and down at the kitchen island. I sigh. The chocolates he received for Valentine’s Day loom large in his mind; he has asked me about the candy four times in the last two hours.
“Fine, go ahead.”
He squeals with excitement and calls for his sisters, thoughtfully distributing their heart-shaped boxes and ushering them toward the kitchen table. “Can I eat all of them?” he asks hopefully, twisting to look back at me.
My eyes roll upward as I consider this request. If I say no, I am sure he will pester me about the candy until it’s gone, triggering a battle of wills I’d rather avoid. But yes feels too much like my own binge eating. I’ve never been the kind of person who eats one treat and then stops; I want something better for my kids. I’d rather they learn to pace themselves, to be intentional about how much junk food they eat, to balance their sweets with more nutritional options. This feels like a lose-lose situation.
“Oh, all right,” I finally agree. There is a chorus of shrieks as my children thrust their hands into their boxes and fumble with the crinkly, brown wrappers. Within seconds, their joy becomes muffled by chocolate and chewing, the kind of quiet my mother used to call ice cream silence.
I am about to turn away to load the dishwasher when an idea strikes me. “You may eat as much of your candy as you want,” I announce. “But you don’t have to finish it.”
I offer them what I wish I had: freedom.
I don’t know if this freedom will make a difference to them. They may follow along my well-trodden path, choosing to look for fulfillment in all the wrong places. My son may continue to wrestle with his own desires to get what he wants at any cost. But the truth is I cannot make his choices for him. All I can do is show him what options are available.
“Can I put one back in the box if I already bit it?” my son asks, making a face at the chocolate caramel in his hand.
“Sure. It’s your box … you can do whatever you want.”
“This one is too sweet,” he says, placing it carefully back in its labeled section. I stare at him, agape. Too sweet? Such a thought would never have occurred to me.
And even as he reaches for a chocolate nougat, I feel the smallest flare of hope ignite. I can’t change history, but the future—his future and mine—we are still writing it, one choice at a time.
Guest essay written by Melissa Hogarty. Melissa lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and three very loud and silly children. She believes deeply in the power of reading and the love of Christ. She is a member of the Kindred Mom team, where her writing is regularly featured. Melissa loves to bake, sing loudly, and make things with her hands. She occasionally blogs about food, faith, and family over at Savored Grace , and you can also find her on Instagram.