introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- family album sunday morning - 6 july, 2014 "you steal me away with your eyes and with your mouth and just take me back to a room in your house and stare at me with the lights off."~daughter the weekend away has gone by quickly. i arrived in boston on thursday just in time for the first band of hurricane rain to get started. i picked up dinner for us on the way in to the city. my sister and i watched the boston pops play on her giant television and then moved to her bedroom to watch the fireworks explode over the city. within about a half hour of the finale, the storms started. the roof parties cleared quickly and everyone went inside for the night. occasionally, while i watched the storm out the window, stray people caught in the rain would try to huddle under the canopy across the street. the wind made the rain come sideways and, in a second or two, they would realize it and start running through the puddles again, splashing from streetlight to streetlight out of sight. the rain didn't stop until saturday morning. on the holiday, i ran my errands. i filled my cooler with trader joe's groceries that i can't get here in bangor. i got the vitamins my midwife recommended as well as a probiotic from whole foods. i'm glad that boston is close enough that i'm able to do this. even amazon prime can't send me those damned tj's burritos or speculoos for my oatmeal. after our errands were done, my sister and i basically climbed the walls like cats looking for things to do to pass the time in the rain. even she lost interest in her dvr recordings. she did her laundry. she took some pictures for me of my growing pregnant belly. six months, guys...the weight that i continue to lose seems to be offsetting the growth of the baby a little but it's only a matter of a few more weeks before i'll have to think about some new jeans. it's already starting to become quite apparent. we watched the weather carefully. the hurricane stole july 4th at the beach from us but it looked good for saturday the 5th. we went to bed early-ish...my sister likes to be there by 7am so she doesn't have to pay for parking. i was up at quarter past five saturday morning. brushed my teeth, slathered on sunblock, yanked my hair into a tight beach bun, and pulled on my swimsuit. i packed my carl kasell tote with my sunscreen, water, and towel. i grabbed my fancy new beach chair and we headed out the door in the morning rain. we picked up her friend, grabbed breakfast to eat in the car while the rain cleared out, and made it to the beach by seven. the sky was already clearing up over boston in the distance behind us. by 730, the storm was out over the water in a forest gump-y way and my sister and i set up our chairs as close to the water as we could get as the tide slipped further and further out. her friends sat in the car for at least another hour. why go to the beach if you're going to sit in the car? my sister i and made our way all the way up the beach. i found my first few pieces of seaglass that i let her keep. the wind was incredible and i wished for a kite of my own. dad would have loved this kind of wind for his new kites for sure. i can't wait to go to north carolina in september for this very reason. i like watching my dad fly kites more than a lot of things. when we got back to the other end of the beach, my sister's friends were there, bundled up in towels and sweatshirts in the morning sun and acting a little miserable. they didn't last long before they headed home. she took a few pictures of pregnant-me at the beach, none of which i particularly loved...but, hey, let's keep an honest record, yeah? my sister took a lot of pictures of me this weekend--i'd asked her to because i have been feeling strange that there will be no pictures for this kiddo to look at later that show me when i've been pregnant. it's a weird thought, maybe, but i love my mother's old albums very much. it was a little stressful as i acquiesced to just let it happen. my sister takes a lot of selfies and has it down to a science. i imagine her standing in front of one of the many mirrors in her apartment practicing, gaining muscle memory of that same face she makes in every. single. picture. my smile can't be forced so easily and when i think i'm smiling for a picture, i'm usually disappointed to find my resting bitch face still intact. i can't fake that stuff at all and sometimes, that's pretty inconvenient. before she takes a picture, i laugh as she readies every muscle in her face to make dimples deeper, show the correct number of teeth, and seem perfectly adorable in every shot. knowing that this is precisely what is happening makes me smile. then she can take the picture of my actual smile. she tried and failed a good bit at getting me to pose this way and that way. stupid chicken wing poses that felt silly and not like me at all. but i let her do her thing. so now we've got some pictures. even a fucking picture of my hands making a fucking heart on my belly because...why? whatever. i did what i was told. one mustn't upset the Glitter Queen. so i stepped outside a whole cargo ship of boxes this weekend in terms of my comfort zones. i just let her do what she wanted. in the end, we got a few shots that i actually liked and that's all that mattered, i guess. at the beach, 6 months pregnant and still wearing the same swimsuit i wore at the beach last fall...and feeling only slightly self conscious about it. i've come a pretty long way and i can appreciate this journey differently now. years ago, i wouldn't have gone to the beach at all. i wouldn't wear dresses or skirts or shorts. years ago, when i did end up at presque isle on lake erie, i was happy...but i never took off my clothes to just enjoy the sun in my bathing suit...i just never had any confidence to do that sort of thing. i felt like i did the general public more of a favor to just keep those clothes on. so what changed? maybe i just got older. i remember the first skirt i bought that wasn't because some function or other demanded it...i remember taking brian with me to tell me practically whether i was being crazy. i was probably 23 years old that summer. the skirt was long and green and embroidered near the deep slit up the side. it was cotton and light and perfect for summer. i remember wearing it on the plane trips between pittsburgh and nashville because we had to dress up on planes if we wanted to fly for free. i now sort of relish traveling in jeans and comfortable shoes. when i'm actually paying for the ticket, i'll do whatever i want. after that one invincible summer, i lost it all again. it was a long time after that that i started buying dresses...and that is pretty dumb, guys. maybe it was that summer with jess danyi that did it. once, after everything had gone wrong with us, i ran into jess and stanley at the brown hotel. i was wearing one of my new dresses. i said hello to them. she told me how she'd been trying more cooking because of the time we'd spent together...i told her how i'd been wearing dresses and growing my hair a little because of her--and that was so true. while that friendship is part of my past, i am thankful for the impact she had on my life. i spoke openly with her about body image issues...it was better therapy than therapy, probably. on those long bike rides together, i feel like i realized that i am not the only one that feels the way i do and so i just stopped worrying so much. i know that my body is strong and generally healthy despite the way i assume it appears to others. then i stopped caring about everyone else because i realized that everyone is too busy worrying about themselves to even notice me in the first place. we're all so self involved and afraid. it took me nearly 30 years to get to that point...and i just learned to stop worrying. so now i'll wear dresses or skirts and sandals in summer because it's the closest i can get to nothing at all on these hot summer days. i read articles about fat-shaming and self-shaming and wonder why this stuff wasn't out there when i was 19 and hating myself so much? i'm glad it's out there for girls now. i'm glad that there are people like tess munster and thebiggirlscode (instagram) out there doing their things. still, i'm not entirely sure how much impact these sorts of things truly have...because i could have read all of that when i was 18. i could've rallied for body image issues--surely someone was then, right? but reading and logically understanding something doesn't equate to feeling it or believing it in one's heart. when it comes down to it, it took growing into my own skin. so all those weird angles in those pictures are just some of my angles. that chicken-wing pose isn't something i'd ever do in real life so don't be too surprised if you never see it outside of a photo taken by my sister. i have a lot of angles and i'm just now learning to find my favorite thing in each of them and stop going right for my flaws. it's way less crazy and stressful that way anyway. and i still don't get the heart on my belly thing...is that something i missed in pop culture for pregnant ladies? is there a hashtag for that? crap, i'm always late to the party. #yolo, america. jones ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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