Prolifically Raw: Sweet Memories

Monday, July 03, 2006

Sweet Memories

I was at the beach this weekend, rewriting, getting good mana in, bad energy out and feeding my addiction the internet�when I decided to find out exactly how many donuts is �too� many!!

A box of Entenmann�s Softees later, I was in my room reading the fat/calorie content (hey, I thought these were supposed to be fat free??)

13 grams of fat each. Calorie 250 (per donut).

Wow, that�s a lot for one little round!

I check out the spare tire around my middle and let go. Was it pinch an inch or was it pinch three inches?

Remember the fun of getting fat when you were pregnant, I told myself, it's fine, it's fine!
So I prepare!

Can�t just eat a donut with out a cup of coffee, so I put on a pot and go for it!

One down!

Very nice.

250 calories of a 2000 calorie diet.

No problem.

Two, equally yummy!

500 calories of a 2000 calorie diet.

Okay, we�re still good.

But hey, the coffee is still here and I can�t drink coffee without another donut.

Three!

Tasty.

750 calories. 36 grams of fat.

No biggy.

My body is mine, renaissance goddess, screw those fitness magazine covers and the so called images of cultural perfection. Try perfectly miserable!

In fact, if I hold my arms way, way over my head, I am fantastic.

Let�s go for four!

Okay, now my coffee is gone.

Think I�ll grab another cup, add a little � & �!

Now we�re good again.

I abandon the calorie and fat gram count--this is a party!

Six donuts later, I�m overloaded!

This is good, the coffeepot is empty anyway.

I sit to begin writing again, contemplating my experience and around the perimeter of my memory is another time, way, way back when, living in a small town in Western Washington with my aunt and uncle. They were such big people! While my uncle seemed to relish his gut and how it protruded from even the largest undershirt, my poor aunt AGONIZED. The Pritiken Diet, the Carb. Diet, the Water Diet. I kept telling her she was beautiful but she wanted none of that. She was steeped in agony over her body. Don�t even get me started on her misery over her hair.

Then there was my Auntie Carol�and let me say, before I get pummeled with letters from family that claim my memories are flawed, god forbid starting web sites to discredit and harass, let it be clear that these are my memories. I certainly am willing to admit that I might not have all the details it right. Ok? (That�s what we in the memoir business call a disclaimer�more to come on this subject I am sure.)

Auntie Carol; the mystic oldest sister of my father�s family. She was Catholic, navigating the complex field of religion as it was juxtaposed against her more esoteric spiritual beliefs. I was terrified of Auntie Carol and I admired her tremendously. She was likely the only human in my small universe who could begin to speak my language (that of the spirit) but we had no words to actually speak yet. Those were the times of suppression and denial.

While she visited that year, she taught me to play cribbage and we swapped paper back romances. I was in bliss.

Then came a Sunday, after church, and my uncle had picked up a box of Hostess donuts. It was a twelve pack, powered sugar, plain and cinnamon sugar, just like my coastal box so many years later.

Auntie Carol was bigger than my aunt and uncle put together. She was a whole family to herself, a large presence, a vast universe. As we stood at the counter, I watched her inhale six donuts in less than thirty seconds. No coffee, no counting, no savoring. They were simply gone and in witnessing this, I had never felt more alone with another human and yet, more connected to their pain.

My aunt was a mother of five, had been divorced (unacceptable as a Catholic), saw saints hovering in the clouds, wore massive hunks of turquoise to balance herself and was a self trained masseuse who wrote her own book on the topic. Unfolding her life accomplishments is not like unfolding my own!

Writing about her brings up so much longing because I think I really loved her. I really longed to �talk� to her as I am free to talk today. She is gone, dead, like so many in my family and the donuts that I have taken in turn around on her memory. They are feeding my cells with a secret communicado from Auntie Carol.

�Savor,� I feel her say.
Be free, I feel her urge.
Live, I here her whisper.

I think, had things not gone so desperately wrong in my own life, I would have ended up with Auntie Carol and I am sure, I would have had a very interesting childhood under her tutelage. She, by her very presence, would have likely awakened me earlier and I might have helped her take better care of her precious human body.

Who knows but the donuts have served their purpose, not of calories or grams of fat or even stomach capacity. They have delivered me to memory, the greatest teacher of all.