Ever since I can remember, come January 1st my mother would say to me “Katharine, today I start my new program!”
My mother and her best friend Mimi would then take themselves to the Y.W.H.A where they would slowly saunter around the track for 10 minutes before retreating to the sauna. My mother’s program would continue for a few days along with the ubiquitous black coffee and grapefruit before complaining about feeling weak and insisting my father take her to Moishe’s for a steak dinner.
When I was in my twenties my girlfriends and I were always trying the latest diet craze. I was 5’2, weighed 115 pounds, and I thought I was fat. Not just zaftig, I actually believed that I was heavy and ergo, undesirable. We starved our way through The Cabbage Soup Diet, The Scarsdale Diet and my personal favourite, The Lemon Juice, Maple Syrup and Cayenne Pepper Diet.
I would mix all the above ingredients with water and force myself to drink 8 glasses of this mixture each day. This concoction was supposed to cleanse my body and bring it back to purity and alignment.
Whilst in the midst of one such cleanse I went on a date with a woman I desperately desired. She chose the venue, a sleek Asian/Fusion restaurant. As she ate I stared ravenously at her rainbow trout filet instead of gazing into her intense green eyes. My date asked if I was hungry, I insisted that my hot water and lemon tea would satisfy. Suffice to say that was our first and last date.
As I approach senior citizenship, I am still riding that streetcar named self-abnegation, hoping when I eventually disembark, I will step into my very own lavender land of Oz. My mother will great me with a bouquet of purple roses, the Mayor will give me the keys to his city and K.D Lang will give me the keys to her home.
However, everyone knows what happened to Dorothy when she landed up in Oz. Dorothy needed to learn that there is no place like home and that she had the knowledge all along – yada yada.
So what is this lesbian Jewess to do?
I know for sure what I won’t be doing:
I will not be starting my new program.
This is the first time in my adult life that I will not be starting the New Year with a resolve to diet. I am done with diets forever. I believe there is a reason the word ‘die’ is in diet, for each time in the past when I began a new diet a small part of me died. I am cooking meals for myself for the first time in my life. Healthy meals, not steamed kale and air cooked fish, but fried chicken with baked sweet potatoes drizzled with olive oil and brown sugar.
I have now come to realize there is no There, there.
No mythical land to travel to, no good witch to give me ruby slippers.
There is just here and just now and just me.
I am the only one that can give myself any lasting benedictions.
Beginning now, I am going to try loving my aging wrinkled womanly body and be grateful that my body allows me to walk with my puppy Lucille at Kew Beach in Toronto, the very same body that allows me to feel pleasure when I eat fresh red snapper at Milo’s in Montreal, and pancakes at The Ritz in Palm Beach.
I shall enjoy eating delicious homemade donuts, while rejoicing that I am now eating mindfully. When I check in with my body I realize that eating two donuts is actually okay, the donut police will not come and take me away.
I am profoundly grateful that despite all the abuse I have heaped on my body I am still here to delight in long slow delicious kisses, grateful to read the new J.M. Redmann novel in front of a roaring fireplace with a soft blanket covering my always cold feet.
To reiterate:
No more New Year’s diet resolutions, resolutions are so passe!
Here is my New Year Mantra:
Be kind to myself. Be kind to myself. Be kind to myself. Be kind to myself.
Thin or heavy. Happy or sad. Productive or sloth like. Brilliant or dull. Beautiful or plain. Single or coupled.
Just be kind to yourself, Katharine.
And if you are still here with me –
please be kind to yourself as well.