butterball

My father didn’t like my hair and he was anxious about my nose, which he feared would turn out like his. He didn’t like my potbelly either (they called me “butterball” as a baby), and when I was a child my dad used to poke me in the gut and ask, “You got an inch to pinch?” My relationship to food is complicated for all kinds of reasons. My father traumatized my mother by constantly criticizing her body; after they divorced, she kept on dieting and I started eating a whole lot of broke-single-mother food (namely no-name brand cookies and Hamburger Helper). After he died in 2004, I started to gain weight. Was it because I moved to Louisiana and bought my first car? Or was it because I finally felt free to eat without my father’s eagle eyes watching for me to “blow up?” I loved my father deeply and was desperate for his approval, and hardly a day has gone by in the past ten years when I haven’t thought of him and smiled. On Saturday I braved the three-inch slush on the sidewalks and took a walk around my neighborhood. I’m trying to lose weight—not for my father, but for myself—and that means making sure I’m active every day, even when the weather sucks. As I passed the Brooklyn Museum, I saw a Black father helping his daughter build a snowman. And I smiled but didn’t let myself stare. I don’t know if my father ever built a snowman with me, but he used to take us ice skating and I remember watching in awe as he whizzed around the rink on his hockey skates. I was competitive as a kid because my father cared about sports, and being a winning athlete meant he would be proud of me. I beamed when he called me “Slugger,” even if he missed the softball game when I hit that grand slam and was named MVP. My dad let me down more times than I can count, and yet so much of who I am today is a direct result of trying—and failing—to please him. I have all kinds of “other mothers” but I don’t have any older men in my life who fill that fatherly role. And I like it that way—as I often say, “Surviving one father was enough!” It’s my dad’s birthday today; he would have been 74. He died young because he wouldn’t treat his prostate cancer, so it metastasized and spread to his liver and lungs. We’re having a blizzard right now and that’s often a great time to write. But I’m procrastinating, of course. Earlier I watched my first YouTube hair tutorial; Bianca Alexa taught me how to do a “Pineapple Up Do,” which is actually kind of cute. My father would be horrified—it’s too wild, too far from his idea of how “a lady” should look. My father was a bundle of contradictions—he adored Dionne Warwick and Linda Carter. I don’t really recall him ever calling me pretty, but I remember him raving about Linda Carter and then telling me years later that I “looked like Wonder Woman.” I don’t think I look like Linda Carter but if that’s the best my father could do, I’ll take it.