Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs by Cheryl Peck Read Free Book Online Page A

of my snores. We co-napped until about 10 A.M. when her brother got her up, changed her diapers, dressed her, and suggested we might rush to the car while the mood was
     still good and the weather sunshiny. I did put her in the car seat, and he did gently let me know how to do it better next
     time. We went to the craft show, where eighty women converged on us, all cooing, “What a BEAUTIFUL baby …” and I didn’t see
     her again for an hour and a half. She fell asleep in the car on the way home. I walked into the house, became involved in
     a phone conversation with a family member whose life is not going well … I had less than an hour and a half to go when several
     thoughts occurred to me at once.
    D.B. was not sleeping.
    D.B. was not happy.
    D.B.—who was not supposed to be hungry until her mother came home—had ALREADY been fed one bottle of interim formula and her
     brother, who panics even faster than I do, was ready to feed her another.
    I was actually going to have to work for a living.
    We tried strolling in the stroller, but we were over-strolled. We tried rocking in the rocker, but it didn’t fit and we were
     restless and we had missed a nap while playing with our brother. We wanted (the Least Wee Aunt determined) to sleep, but we
     were only 3.5 months and we didn’t know how.
    So the Least Wee and the Weeest sat down on the couch, cuddled up in a blanket, rocked ourselves, and sang Universal Songs
     of Truth while the Weeest snuffled about the injustice of unfaithful mothers and the Least Wee thumped. We sang the “Butt-Thump
     Song” (to the tune of “Jingle Bells”):
    Thump your butt, thump your butt,
    Thump your butt all day—
    Thump your butt, thump your butt,
    Thump your butt today (HEY!)
    or the “Ooo’sa Pooh Song” (sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells”):
    Ooo’sa Pooh, Ooo’sa Pooh,
    Ooo’sa Pooh all day …
    (“Ooo’sa” meaning “You are” and “Pooh” being a generic shorthand for anything soft and cuddly, like, for instance, a cat.
     This is Babycakes’ favorite song.)
    The songwriter’s guild hasn’t called me yet.
    And finally we gave up on complex lyrics and settled for the “Let Me Sleep” song (sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells”).
    She weighs fifteen pounds. Her head fits neatly under my chin. Her little hands rested up on my shoulders, one reflexively
     gripping my neck from time to time. She folded up her legs against my hips and slept tucked up frog-like against me while
     I rocked her and thumped her back and crooned nonsensical little songs no one else but my cats will listen to.
    I found myself thinking about my grandmother and those fifteen little girls’ dresses with the double- and triple-stitched
     seams, the lace, the rows and rows of decorative stitching, the hems we had to stand still for on the stairway while she hung
     her row of straight pins … it was a woman’s ritual. The three of us— our mother, her mother and us girls were the only ones
     there. We were Getting Ready.
    I’ve been thinking about my grandmother—and my mother— more than usual, these past three and a half months. I find myself
     making mental notes to remember to show D.B. the Sacred M&M’s Flower Arranging Ritual my grandmother and I shared. (This ritual
     involves a flat-bottom dish, multicolored M&M’s, and a passionate desire to create flowers out of small pieces of candy.)
     I’m beginning to understand why so many of the stories my grandmother told me were about her mother, who died before I was
     ever born. Her stories were threads sewing us all together, one generation after another, exactly as bits and pieces of used
     experiences come together to make the patchwork of shared memory. This is where you came from. This is what you could become.
     These are the women who shaped your life. This is how we survive.

of mites and men
    C OCKATIELS CAN LIVE to be twenty-five years old,” I lectured, which my friend Annie agreed was a significant commitment.