On Lady Gaga, Andy Williams, and me

I spent the afternoon surfing the net. When I wasn’t on youtube watching crackly Andy Williams clips, I was searching google images for pictures of fat Lady Gaga, who looks just fine to me.  It was one of those afternoons when I meant to be productive but just couldn’t focus. 

Plus, Andy Williams passed away today. He was a big chunk of my childhood.

Young Andy Williams reminds me of my dad back in the 1960s:  Same taut skin, same hair, same bright grin. I had so much fun today, watching Andy talk so sweetly with little Donny and Marie Osmond. I’d like to think that my dad and mom talked with us kids in much the same way, but that would be so absurd and of course a gigantic lie. They were a little more human than Andy Williams’s television persona. 

Though my dad could give Andy a run for his money when it came to entertainment. My dad was great at banging out pop hits of the sixties on my parents’ prize possession, our Gulbransen piano that my dad got at a bargain price from some friend of a friend of a friend. The piano was the French provincial centerpiece of my mother’s French provincial living room. To my little girl eyes, our three-decker front room was a princess palace.  The good room, which was what we called this fairy tale place, was all gracefully carved chairs and marble topped tables and gold-accented mirrors. Our piano was topped with a plaster bust of Mozart, and next to that a gold-colored chalice artfully overflowing with plastic fruit that always made my mouth water. 

We were not allowed in that glorious sparkly confection of a room without parental supervision. Seriously.  I remember poking my toe into that room from the threshold of the adjoining television room just to see what would happen, and getting yelled at. 

Every night we were allowed in the room while my dad or mom played the piano. My mom loves the classics. One of her favorite pieces has always been Debussy’s “Claire de Lune.”  Even now, she never uses sheet music. She knows all her favorites by heart. Her touch is nuanced and light. As a kid, I  thought she was magic.  Though I took piano lessons for years, I’ve never been able to replicate my mother’s  fluidity and grace. 

My dad’s musical talents were and still are more pedestrian. He plays the songs of the masses. He is the master of the choppy left-hand chord. He loves his college fight songs, his Irish folk songs, and back on View Street, he adored his classic pop songs and he loved to sing. The three of us, me, my dad, my sister, would squeeze onto the piano bench, with him in the middle. We’d sing along to “Moon River,” “I’m a Lonely Little Petunia,” and of course “Daddy’s Girl.”   

Today, mentally anyhow, I’m back on Vernon Hill, in our second floor apartment. I’m sitting on our braided rug, eyes fixed on the black and white television that sits under the shining maple mantle, where the fireplace is supposed to be. It’s just the four of us, my parents, my sister, and me. 

  

Back in the sixties my father was tan and trim. My dad made his living as a teacher, so he was out of school before three. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays after work he’d head straight out to Westborough Country Club for a couple of hours of golf. He played every Saturday and Sunday too, sometimes working in fifty-four holes in one weekend. He’s still a little obsessed with his sport and still trim, though not as tanned because he uses heavy-duty sunscreen now.  

Today, when people ask me how I’ve developed such a strong exercise habit, I tell them about my dad and his golf routine. That’s what I grew up thinking was normal. You spent part of the day working, and part of the day playing.  Until I was in high school, I thought everyone’s dad played golf every day.  

My mother was and still is small and thin. She’s never been a big sports person, but she’s always loved to read and used to love to smoke.  Smoking helped keep her thin. Though my mom wasn’t into athletics at all, her legs could have been runner legs or ballerina legs. They were and still are that shapely. My mom and her two sisters, both now passed, used to joke that the three of them had the best legs in the city. I think they were right.

      

My one sister is much younger than me. She’s built like my mother, only smaller and thinner.  

And then there’s me, the one who doesn’t belong. Here’s me at age five watching Andy Williams and the Osmonds sing “Lida Rose:”  I am thick and meaty and sit cross-legged on the floor. I grab at my stomach and say to my parents, “Look, I have three rolls!”  Of fat I mean. I’m proud because the day before, I had four rolls. Five years old and that’s what I’m thinking. Interesting, eh? 

My mother told me I didn’t start out fat. I was just six pounds at birth. In early pictures, I look exactly right. I have sweet baby cheeks and dimpled arms. In my Polly Flinders holiday dresses, I look like a child model.  

Then my sister was born. She was an underweight, ill preemie who needed lots of attention. Though I was three when she was born, I still needed attention too. According to my mother, I found the best way to get it was to eat lots of Oreo cookies. The cookies were stashed in the silver bread box on the counter in the pantry. The pantry, a narrow room lined with cabinets on one side, was off the kitchen and set far back from the television room. 

It was quite easy to steal cookies. While my parents watched Andy Williams, I’d get up and pretend I was going to my room for something. My room was next to the pantry. I’d sneak in there instead and start gobbling away. Sometimes, my gluttony would get the best of me and I’d lose track of time and place. Discipline wasn’t exactly my forte back then. My mom or dad would sneak up on me and catch me in the act. They’d yell at me, but that didn’t deter me. I just learned to get sneakier and quieter.  

I was put on my first diet before I was four. The doctor who put me on the diet was my pediatrician, Dr. Riordan. I think I liked him. I was never afraid of him, I remember that much. Two other things I remember: He was fat and he was a smoker.  Yup. A fat, smoking doctor put three-year-old me on a diet.  And my parents were okay with that.  

Nothing really changed after that, except that now the milkman brought two bottles of milk twice a week instead of one: a huge full-fat bottle for everyone else, and a small bottle of skim for me. To this day, I can only drink skim milk. The full-fat stuff makes me gag.  

I was thinking about being little after I read about Andy Williams, and that, combined with reading about Lady Gaga’s twenty-five pound weight gain brought me back to being little and fat and the outsider.

I was one of the fattest kids in my class for most of my childhood. I can recall the exact name and address of the one girl in my grade who was heavier than me. I think that says just about everything about my mindset back then.

“At least I’m not as fat as L.” I remember thinking that all the time, even in first grade. I remember being uncomfortable when she was absent, because when she was out, I was the fattest kid in school. 

Over the years, my weight has gone up and gone down. I’ve learned quite a lot about people during this process, because fat me gets treated differently by others than thin me, even though I’m always the same person inside.  I’ve experienced cruelty and apathy, which is a kind of cruelty I think, when I was heavy. I’ve been fawned over and treated like a princess when I was thin.   

I’m curious to see how this whole Lady Gaga weight thing plays out in the press. I hope she stays true to herself and makes choices about her weight based on what she wants, not on what others expect. That’s what I’ve learned works best for me.  

Plus, there are a lot of little girls watching, and their moms and dads too.  Maybe they’ll all learn something.