Little Annie twirled and swirled and fell and rose without even a pause or a hint of self-pity. She just got back up and danced to the music in her head. I sat on the pseudo-soft floral couch familiar to all Latter-day Saint chapel lobbies worldwide, there across from my new friend, Annick. She had recently relocated to our neighborhood from Bountiful, but had originally hailed from Medford, MASS. I instantly liked her for her accent, her lack of makeup, and her obvious taste for comfortable shoes, but mostly she felt like a kindred spirit because home to her, like me, was east of the Mississippi River. Annick sat in one of the velvet chairs across the lobby, under the dusty leaves of a hovering fake ficus tree. She was out there with us in the foyer because Andrew was just as wiggly as Annie, none of which went very well with the passing of the holy sacrament inside the chapel. I must have closed my eyes, or drifted into attempted reverence, because Annick’s words startled me;
“I’ve never seen a spirit so happy to be in a body!” Only she said it with that Boston flair, like this:
Eye have neh-vuh seen a spear-ut sewwww happy to beena bawdy! (emphasis on the “so”.)
After the millisecond it took for me to translate, I turned my eyes to my Annie, and sure enough, there was joy overflowing! That one phrase endeared Annick to me for life, and still, more than thirty years later, I hold her to my heart like a sister.
I think God sent my daughter Annie specifically to me, for me. She came to teach me. The youngest of my four treasures, she was Tigger personified. She bounced three separate cribs off their hinges. She surely contributed to her father’s perpetually sore knee. My sister tells of the time she entered the old house on Kensington Street, the one just up the hill from the old-old house (we have owned three houses in this neighborhood; wanted change but could never bear the thought of leaving the people here)…she tells of walking in the front door and finding Annie literally swinging from the chandelier over the kitchen table. Thank goodness she was tiny then. I love what Annie tried to teach me. Annie understands that her body is the house of her spirit.
I’m not exactly sure when the demon Shame laid its ugly shroud over my body. I was young, but not too young. I can still conjure feelings of freedom and exuberance regarding my flesh, but I have to dive way back. Just about the time my father abandoned us, I began babysitting for a family in our apartment building, down on the opposite side of the complex. After the kids were in bed I sat in the TV room waiting for the top of the hour when a new episode of Emergency or CHIPS would start. Beside the chair there was a basket of magazines. These were not the typical Children’s Friend or New Era magazines you might find in our apartment. But they were magnetic. And they were naughty. Naughty is by nature magnetic. And the anonymity of this secret quiet room was compelling. Anyway, it has come to me that the photos and the poses in those magazines sprouted the seeds of shame that lay tucked deep inside the fertile ground of adolescence. Months before we had moved to our apartment I had suffered an event of massive personal proportions where the awareness of my body as something other than innocence was ripped from my belly by an abusive house guest. At the same time my body was changing shape, the baby fat shifting up from my waist and into my breasts. And then there was blood. Sometimes I allow myself to pause, inhale slowly, and look back at that little girl, and the emotion it always evokes is compassion and sorrow. I remember telling a therapist once how it felt: I was, one minute, playing on the school playground with the rest of the kids. I could feel my own laughter, and I was cooled by the air that fanned against me as I swung back and forth, back and forth on the swing set. Then, suddenly, I was on the outside of the chain link fence surrounding the play yard, my hands curled through the cold twisted metal, and the rest of the children went on playing. The laughter drifted through the fence, but I was no longer a part of it. I had to watch from the outside.
I weep for that girl.
I weep for every child standing outside the fence.
I weep for every child standing outside the fence.
That girl eventually covered up her tummy, and her shoulders, thinking it was modesty, when in reality it was shame. For one brief teenage moment she wore a pair of Peanut hip hugger bell bottom jeans, and a tank top, and guys on the street whistled and she liked it. But soon enough she found comfort and safety in a thicker waist and puffy sleeves, then eventually she disappeared into oversized football shirts and a soft pair of 501’s.
Throughout my life, a cushion of comfort padded the vulnerability of my heart. To this day, I like the soft bread-dough texture of too much skin over too much flesh. It’s really a love-hate relationship. I have felt compelled to announce publicly that I was fully aware of my overweightness, like I owed the world an apology for not being fit, or at least thin. The two are not necessarily the same. What should anyone besides me care what shape my own personal body is in? It is a real curiosity to me that I am so overtly aware of this physical flaw. In fact, thinking on it right now, I am ashamed of the shame. Now there’s a double-whammy!
Now that my body has been around for so many decades, things are shifting again. When my mother died, I think she left me her hands. My fingers are not as long and slender, but those wrinkles and veins and age spots began to appear the moment she left. I gaze on them, perhaps because they are so easily seen from where I sit, or look down on them when I play guitar, and think about all the love that has come from them. The love speaks first: patting babies’ backs, brushing soft locks of hair, folding piles and piles of laundry, stirring pots and scrubbing little brown summer-blessed knees in a bubble bath. But the same hands have spanked bottoms in pure anger, and slammed doors, and wiped hot tears and dripping noses. Shame rests knuckle-to-knuckle with love in these hands.
This old body of mine is a bit weary, and her legs hurt, Always, her legs hurt. Even her toes carry shame. Years and years of shame over ingrown toenails. Seriously!
If my uncooperative legs would let me, I think maybe I would just let go in church tomorrow. I am old enough now to get away with this type thing. I might go out there in the lobby during the sacrament and give it a go, twirling until I fell, then getting back up just like my Annie. I would say to myself how happy I was to be in my body. Only I know better, and all of that would hurt, and even if there was no shame left to manifest, the hurt would have a good guffaw over the whole thing.
For good and for… well, just for good, our Father gave us this supreme gift, a house for our spirits. As far as I know, this is the only one I’ve got permission to use. It’s sluggish, and not the most pleasing to look at, but it’s mine and mine alone. And the only way to access the spirit who dwells here is through these fleshy walls; through my eyes, my touch, the sound of my voice, or the messages in my fingers. I speak to all I know through this flesh. No other way.
And so, I picture this: I see myself loosening my grip on that imaginary chain-link fence. I stretch my frozen fingers in the warmth of the sunny playground, and move my sluggish feet around the perimeter of the fence, over to the gate, and let myself walk in; toward the laughter, toward the light, toward the Son.
