Your Mother Was (Infuriatingly) Right About That, Too

An entry from The Fat Pants Diaries or The Truth Shall Set Your Hips free. What better way is there to let freedom ring? Happy Independence Day Weekend!

“Talbot’s pants don’t fit me”, I exclaimed in slight frustration and inarguable fact. “And I feel like shopping there has officially ended.” (I like their sandals, though).

Shopping is supposed to be fun when your mother visits. But recently it has become a slog.

I hate pants. I have hated them for “much” time. I’m not talking about jeans. I don’t hate jeans. Jeans suck in all the imperfections. Jeans have just enough tug and pull to put what may be out of place aright again. Jeans go with everything; a bosom pal.

But jeans all the time? Boring – and holes have become, to my utter bewilderment, the height of fashion. I do not do holes.

Pants, however, (i.e. slacks) do not uphold anything. Pants are supposed to be smooth and sleek, but they are really deceivers who entice you on the public hanger, looking so fair, suave, and elite, hanging long, and alluring in neat lines… “Wear ME. I’m all class,” Pants claim. Yeah.

Pants always pull at that area just outside the pelvic plane toward the hips and makes those awful horizontal “pull-wrinkles” especially for curvy hipped women like me.

Those pants! Those evil pants! They are moles. The minute you put them on they out themselves as undercover rats, snitching on every dent and dimple you have, squeezing you until you cry “uncle”. Usually just about time you’ve pulled them up to the lower thigh. And off they fly in a rumpled fit of irrational hatred and, depending on the state of your blood sugar level or hormonal imbalance, spiraling despair.

I stand firm on my Hyde Park Soap Box. “Why can’t these designers get pants right?!”

I had tried on my size: PINEAPPLE, (for we will not deal with the sheer genius that is the unstandardized mathematical system of sizing in the US, much like changing names in memoir to protect the guilty), PINEAPPLE size, I say, because I am, alas, not an APPLE anymore. APPLE  will probably never return, and I have come to grips with this development. APPLE served me in my youth, my 20’s and 30’s. Thank you, APPLE. APPLE has been laid to rest.

I now had resolved myself to befriend PINEAPPLE, an acceptable and close relative that did not offend and would not come across as the visitor who overstayed her welcome. We are good, PINEAPPLE and me. She was a little tart at first, but I got used to the taste. She allows me sit without splitting at the backend seam. (I may never forgive APPLE for that knowing how I feel about holes. But the jeans were a very thin fabric…of course.) PINEAPPLE was and is a fare and acceptable trade off. I now wear, and am committed, to PINEAPPLE.

“I think you need to try CANTALOUPE”, my mother says matter of factly offering the new hanger of slacks toward me as I stand within the Talbot’s dressing room doorframe wearing the PINEAPPLE PANTS (that don’t fit right because it’s Talbot’s fault for bad design for women with curvy hips), amongst two “Talbot’s Assistants” and one or two other women trying their best at making atrociously printed sacks come off as dresses.

“Those won’t fit me! I don’t wear CANTALOUPE! CANTALOUPE is way too big,” I declare in a huff and fit of regal offense.

And then my mother did the unthinkable. She raised her eyebrows, widened her eyes, and tilted her head downward assessing me in the most “let’s get real” fashion. Mini darting bullets might as well have shot from her eyes while the ladies in waiting of all fruit sizes silently rendered judgement.

The effrontery!

I snatched that hanger and dove into my cave dressing room, peeled off PINEAPPLE pricking me all the way down, thinking of all the things I would proclaim to the Queen Mother afterward as to how we do not air out our true feelings about the royal fruit sizes in front of the court.

I was increasingly livid as I slid on the CANTALOUPE sized pants she’d given me easily, effortlessly, without tug, without pull, and without pelvic horizontal pleating.

CANTALOUPE fit. CANTALOUPE looked on me like CANTALOUPE looked on the hanger. Okay CANTALOUPE  was a slight big in the waist, but you know, belts, a tuck here and there. Ugh! Slight?

CANTALOUPE fit.

I WAS OUT OF MY MIND FURIOUS!

Because she was riiiiiiggggghhhhtttttt! AHHHHHHHHHHHH! [Though it was a silent scream just stage left of rage.]

I flung off CANTALOUPE in one swift pull (because I could… because they fit), got dressed in my PINEAPPLE stretched-out-agreeable-capri-jeans and flew out of Talbot’s in an imperial snit.

I STOMPED. STOMPED. STOMPED through the parking lot as the Goddess of Petulance on the warpath; my mother keeping up with me in prudent silence.

I will spare you the ensuing monologue, but I do recall the elegant and mature phrase, “You hurt my feelings,” amongst other hits such as “you rolled your eyes in front of everyone” and “It’s hard enough being PINEAPPLE,” made a way through my eloquent verbal gateway of parking lot tantrum.

So we sat in the car. She, feeling awful. I, feeling demoralized.

And fat.

Do you know what a “Come to Jesus” moment is?

It’s when you thought you were PINEAPPLE and Jesus comes to you through your mother to tell you that you are now CANTALOUPE, and you ultimately know it’s the truth. And the truth shall set your hips free. – The Book of Fleur, Verse 1.

Of course, it’s the moment of truth. Truthy truth.

So in Talbot’s, because God is everywhere, I had a “Come to Jesus” moment. The moment when a fruit by any other name did not taste as sweet.

Let’s face it. I was mostly irate that my mother was right.

So I think next, we went to a chocolate shop, ate something calorically and fatfully-filled, drank some London Fog Tea Latte, and armed up for the reality of… expanding fruit.

I had been humbled by the incremental stealthy expansion of my hips and was forced to admit that Mrs. Talbot did, indeed, not keep herself awake at night devising schemes to outwit my pant wearing future.

The truth is PINEAPPLE was stressing me out. Pretending to be PINEAPPLE was a huge tax on the morning ritual. Deep inside I felt glad to clear her out and put a full stop to the tight under-cupping of my bum.

I am now reminded of a scene in Eat, Pray, Love where Julia Roberts, instead of ceasing the joy of eating ravioli and every possible pasta dish in Italy, simply purchases bigger pants. Case closed.

My mind had been re-ordered to CANTALOUPE. Cantaloupe which I could now calmly speak without high pitched squirrel screech or capitalization. I’d made peace with Cantaloupe.

Until I tried on CANTALOUPE in Chico’s. And it didn’t. fit.

Without pause my mother swooped in with COCOANUT.

I was undone.

I HATE COCOANUT!! I HAVE NEVER EVER LIKED OR EVEN CONSIDERED COCOANUT. I AM NOT A SIZE COCOANUT!!! [More silent screaming.]

“It’s okay,” soothes my mother, “These fruits aren’t standardized. It does mean anything. I wear COCOANUT.”

Oh, God. Oh, God, why did she say that?! No no no no no no no no…. And the balloon slowly deflated down, down to the ground and dissolved under the scorn of the July sun.

After the painful act of rising again, not as the mystical phoenix from the ashes but more like spatula to over-dead egg, the result is that COCOANUT (sigh) now calmly and prayerfully hangs aside CANTALOUPE in my closet as the closest of friends, all hanging neatly. All fitting properly. A mixed fruit salad.

And so this closes the most recent entry of the “Fat Pants Diaries” or “Your mother was right about that, too.” And good for her. Because it’s nice to sit without splitting your seams.

EPILOGUE:

That evening my husband, innocent of the day’s events, put his arms around in me in a close hug.

“Honey, you’re getting so little,” he sweetly shares.

And thus, they remained married ‘til the end of their happy days and Mother would always be welcome at the table.

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What was your mother infuriatingly right about? Oh do share….

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Did you read the first fat pants diaries entry? No? Read that here!