“Um…that’s
not really a Mommy bathing suit.”
We are
leaving for our beach vacation in less than 48 hours and I have left that dreaded chore of bathing
suit shopping to the last minute as usual. My seven year old daughter has
accompanied me to give me her unsolicited fashion advice. I have been eyeing this cute polka dot bikini,
but somehow she doesn’t seem to share my vision of myself as a modern day
Annette Funicello skipping down the sandy beach, Frankie and his ukulele
serenading me in the background…
“What do you mean?” I ask her, not quick
enough to curb the defensiveness in my voice.
“Well,
that’s more of a young person’s bathing suit. (Ouch) It won’t cover all
your …soft bits.”
She’s right
of course. Over the years my mid-section
has expanded and not so gracefully begun to rise in an abundance of stretch-marked
doughy softness. Fact is, a couple of
nursing babies and the comfort of a secure relationship have contributed to a
lifestyle more Poptarts than Pilates and a figure less fit than flabby.
My body
isn’t the only thing to soften as I approach middle-age. My heart has become as Pillsbury as my upper
arms and these days it takes little to melt my defenses and reveal my…soft bits.
Hearing kids laugh, listening to a
colleague’s personal heartache, witnessing harsh words, receiving kind ones,
the slightest human moment releases a hair-trigger response in my eyes
which quickly dampen and belie my bleeding heart. As my waistline grows, so too it seems does my well of
vulnerability.
I used to
admire those who are carefully composed, who seem so strong and always put together. I would listen to friends talk of others who
got randomly emotional. “She’s burning
out,” “He’s oversensitive,” “She’s too involved and has boundary issues,” and
would feel shame at my own PDS (Public Displays of Sappiness). What muscles of theirs were so firm and tight
that they never open and spill over? How do you connect if always disconnected?
As a young new
Child Protection Worker I would sometimes accompany my teenage clients to
juvenile court. On one particular occasion, my client was a 15 year old boy who
had already had a few run-ins with the law. He was a good kid who had fallen
in with the wrong crowd after his parents separated and his father moved to
another city with his new girlfriend.
Today he was facing charges of break and entry. He and some “friends”
had gone on a looting spree in their neighborhood, breaking into homes and
stealing small electronics they would later sell on Craig’s list to
unsuspecting soccer moms. The kid didn’t
lack entrepreneurial spirit, so much as a little basic judgment.
I knew from
the moment we walked into the courtroom that my young client was in for a rough
ride. The crown attorney was a man whose
path I reluctantly crossed every so often. Slickly groomed, he tended to ooze
cold ambition more than warm fuzzies. Charles
was a handsome man but hard and seemingly inaccessible in his rigid
determination. While I might have admired his success, I always felt uncertain
in his presence. He had a tendency to inspire little in me beyond oceans of
internal eyeball rolling. Maybe it was his knock-off Armani suit and the
snugness of his tie that made me sympathetically uncomfortable. More likely it
was the ease with which he walked the line between truth and calculated manipulation.
A master at politicking, a skill I just don’t have and could never compete
with.
The
proceedings began ordinarily enough. As witness after witness rose to the stand
to tell their story, my teen charge slumped deeper and deeper into his chair,
mimicking the depth I predicted his future was sinking into this impossible
hole he had dug himself. I felt my own body start to slip into that
end-of-day-coma as my mind wandered between thoughts about the futility of my
chosen career path and the list of groceries I had to pick up on the way home.
Finally it was time for closing statements. It had been a long day and we were
all tired when Charles began,
“Listen, I
know what it’s like to suddenly find yourself without a parent. To feel lost but …" He paused in mid-sentence.
The judge looked up from his bench, waiting for the punchline.
And that is
when things got weird and out of nowhere, Charles got naked.
He began to
tell us how as a young man he was forced to give up his dreams of law school
and take a factory job near home to help support his family. How his father’s drinking had begun
innocently enough, an extra couple beers at half-time on Sunday afternoon but
following a work accident, soon progressed to overnight binges and impromptu disappearing
acts. He described how almost overnight the man who taught him how to drive a
stick-shift became a menace on the road. Charles’ voice wavered as he
recounted how sometimes his father, fueled by Scotch and self-loathing, would
curse at him furiously, lashing out physically and breaking things around the
house. His childhood story was one of
cowering in corners, bruises hidden, and dreams disillusioned. Absentmindedly
palming the tears from his cheeks, he whispered how at times he was so angry at
his father for disappearing on him, and
at others he would rage at the fact that he would keep coming back.
Charles
paused for a moment. His words hung in the air and I looked around the room,
relieved to see my colleagues as winded by this unexpected flash of exposure as I was. I don’t know what sparked this spontaneous
confession. I just know that it took one look
into Charles' glossy eyes and each of us in that room were swallowing and blinking
back the ache of our shared humanity. Finally he continued,
“I’m sorry,
I just…” He took a deep breath, pulled himself together and turned to the
accused. “I get it. You feel abandoned
and angry. You’re angry at the world. Hell, you're probably angry at yourself. But you
can’t let that anger define you, kid. You can’t.
You can’t let it be the end of your story.”
And just as
the drawn out silence began to push the boundaries of comfort, adding a cherry
punch to this already surreal sundae of a disclosure, the judge, like some
black-robed Yoda, recited,
“Qui n’a vu que la misère de l’homme
n’a rien vu; il faut voir la misère de la femme; qui n’a rien vu que la misère
de la femme n’a rien vu, il faut voir la misère de l’enfant. »*
“He who has seen the misery of man only has seen nothing, he must see the misery of woman; he who has seen the misery of woman only has seen nothing, he must see the misery of the child.”
The air buzzed
with a collective drawn out exhalation. We sat frozen, wondering who would
break the silence. My eloquent client took the leap.
“Yeah ok, guy….whatever.” (What?
Were you expecting a dramatic moment of adolescent self-discovery? Juvenile
Court is not produced by Disney.)
The rest of
the hearing was unremarkable. My client lost and ended up with 240 days of
community service and endless pages of conditions and we all carried on as if
nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
As if boundaries hadn’t been broken and this hearing hadn’t been turned
on its head by one man daring to take it all off. But as we all filed out and I
led my teen client to the exit I found myself giving Charles a nod as I said,
“See you next time." I wanted to thank him for bravely peeling back the layers
to reveal this hole in his heart, for reminding us of the common Swiss-cheesiness
inside us all. For proving there is far more power in our softness than our
muscles. My baggy-jeaned companion might
not have got the message, but I did. Our soft bits, our real bits, are those
that connect us, and at the end of the
day, the greatest gift that we can give anyone is but ourselves.
These days I
find myself drawn to courageous souls who like Charles, unmask themselves so openly and aren’t afraid to go deep and bare it all. And when my own tears sometimes unexpectedly
rinse my eyes to clear the view, I no longer panic but raise my hands in
surrender, laugh and proclaim “It’s hopeless!” as I whip out another brightly-colored
minipack of Kleenex from my purse.
In the end,
I didn’t buy the polka dot bikini but it wasn’t fear that stopped me so much as
geometry and basic physics. I wasn’t afraid to let it all hang out. I actually
didn’t even really try it on. I mean I
TRIED to try it on but in the end it turns out the teeny weeny bikini was even
more itsy bitsy than I had realized and no amount of sausaging was ever going
to get it over my hips.
To my
daughter’s relief I chose a different suit, one that wouldn’t threaten to cut
off my circulation or lead to a holiday week of awkward poolside wedgies. Instead, I bought a suit
that would comfortably display my full self to the warmth of the sun. No cover up. No
shame. Nothing hidden. Just me.
Fully exposed. Soft bits and all.
*Victor
Hugo, Les Misérables
Names and some details have been altered to protect the privacy of those involved but remain true to the essence of the events.
