Food Memories

I remember going to Hermosa Beach with my dad and twin because my dad was house-sitting for a friend. Chris and I were probably 13. This was the first time my twin and I ever went on a trip with just my dad and this was around the time my parents got separated (not sure if it was right before, during, or immediately after – but it was somewhere during Chris and my awkward pubescent state!). My dad took us to a restaurant with a horror movie theme – it was dimly lit and there was horror movie memorabilia all around. Our table would shake sporadically as if haunted — it was amazeballs! I remember Chris and I ordering the same thing, one of our favorites, fried chicken fingers and fries. My dad would glance at our food between puffs of cigarettes. He was not a healthy eater himself, but, then again, he wasn’t much of an eater at all. Cigarettes and alcohol sustained him satisfactorily, so he’d eat small bites of his usual meat and potatoes.

Later that weekend, my dad took us to the grocery market and made a point of reading nutrition labels aloud. I remember him looking at the backs of foods that Chris and I indicated we wanted and deciding whether we could get the food or not. We ending up with Crystal Light, which my dad thought was a sensible low-cal drink option. Later that day, we ordered pizza. And drank our Crystal Light. The next morning, as my brother and I watched t.v., my father provided us with print-outs — mine had a woman on a scale, and Chris’ a man. Both characters had horrified expressions. This was a chart for us to track our weight on a day-to-day basis. And so continued a very schizophrenic relationship with food — we knew we were doing something wrong; food was both a source of solace and misery; we knew that what we ate tied to why we were so fat; we knew labels held some sort of key to a solution; and we “knew” that low-calorie food items should make their way into our diet. So, basically, we knew nothing at all except we were doing something wrong and other people noticed.

Earlier, in elementary school, when Chris and I would walk home we couldn’t wait to rip through the snacks we’d find stocked in our cabinets (I seriously wonder how my parents afforded our eating habits!). One of our staples was Fudge Sticks and other Keebler cookies. We would eat the entire box’s worth, along with numerous Capri Suns, and then we’d usually hit up the 7-11, which was across the street, for more loot. We were latch-key kids with a never-ending supply of quarters for junkfood. This is how Chris and I decompressed after school, and that same mode of decompression would continue all through middle school and then high school. To this day — I have to fight every urge not to binge eat the second I walk through the front door.

I remember going out to lunch once with my mom and twin and my uncle and cousin who were visiting from Costa Rica — my twin and I were probably 15. My cousin had been Ms. Costa Rica — she was tall, lean and dark-skinned with the most beautiful features you could imagine. She basically looked like a tall version of Jasmine from Aladdin. I remember her ordering a salad with no dressing. My twin and I ordered the special we always got — the burger, fries and piece of pie special. I remember thinking: No way will I ever be pretty and skinny like her, eating just lettuce. Might as well go all out!

Here I am now, eating salads with no dressing, striving to be prettier and skinnier. My hamburger past behind me, but a shifty relationship with food before me. It’s seems I left one extreme for another.

Still the same o’ G.

<3,

The Cranky One