I know everyone is consumed with debating the surprise outcome of American Idol last night.  I however find myself somewhere else.  I woke to the realization that it is growing warmer out, the days are longer, my gardens are full of great looking things, my kids are losing their winter pallor, freckles springing out on their perfect noses.  And this can mean only one thing.  (Cue theme to “Jaws”).  Bathing suit season is upon us.  Now I will confess to having had a relatively easy life in bathing suits.  With the exception of my college years where, like a child who had been raised as a captive in a basement and fed only gruel and broth, minus the truly scary part where you bear your fathers children, I decided that I could and should eat all meals plus a third of a case of beer a day accompanied by things like whole bags of sour cream and onion chips and maple candy, sharing all gorging equally with my beloved previously thin roommates Holly and CC. We’d snack on turkey subs, hitchhike to another VT city for freshly made Ben and Jerrys BY THE PINT and indulge in bags of M&M’s to help us cram.  Cram brains and faces with those large bags of M&M’s created for cake decorating or birthday parties, not for single person consumption. We’d think nothing of eating a full meal in the cafeteria and then going out for a second meal an hour later.  It wasn’t pretty and I came home at the end of freshman year having put on what one person phrased “The Freshman Fifty”.  This was the same person who sweetly asked if we’d each had a whole turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.  I think we were sort of legendary on campus because we’d arrived as cute girls that the boys liked.  By the time we left at the end of the freshman year, I’m sure there was a parental debate about the need to strap either us or the bags to the roof of the car.  I had always been a thin person and my family seemed stunned at my new proportions not to mention how closely they had to guard their plates from me.  Luckily this phase passed and I returned to a less debauched and more figure flattering style of life.  So, except for that period,  I never really minded the advent of summer.  But in the last few years I’ve noticed something.  I’ve noticed that the thought of bathing suit season makes me a bit nervous.  It makes me a bit cranky.  And, to tell the truth, it makes me downright frightened.  In the most superficial way.

During the other months I don my jeans and t-shirts, my dresses, my sweaters, my boots and my heels and I feel happy most of the time.  But as each year passes, when push comes to shove and it’s time to get naked and go out in the world midst the judgmental suburban mommies and appraising, lecherous daddies, the gravitational pull of life makes the unveiling just plain tough.  It started a few years ago.  Little things.  The droop in the belly button.  I’ve mentioned that before.  The butt cheeks that when you lifted them had a lot more give than you remembered.  And when you clenched them, the naked rear view caused a quick confused rush of blood to the head.  Even my tiny boobs seemed a little depressed as they veered toward the ground, just the teensiest bit.  Something around my knees…a little pouch that was never there before. The pocket of flesh I lovingly refer to as The Apartment, left over from two pregnancies that produced two fabulous boys even if I did border on college proportions at the end of each nine month festival.  I don’t know why that fleshy pocket won’t leave.  Perhaps it mistakes me for a kangaroo and thinks there will be a future need to carry things in it.  And let’s not even go into age spots.  I refuse to even utter or imagine the words LIVER SPOT.  Surely if they were LIVER spots, mine would be full of holes from alcohol consumption.  We’ll call them age spots.  The phrase “age spots” is not a nice one but it’s far better than referring to a slight natural sun based shift in pigmentation by naming it after an organ responsible for filtering waste.  The skin on your neck and under arms, what do they call it, crepey.  A Crepey Neck.  That’s just wrong.  My neck does not look like an edible crepe?  Nor does it look like the fabric Crepe.  It does, however, look like crap, compared to what it used to look like.  I think that whole thing was a typo.  Ah, this disolution of the body is, in some ways, harder than the face.  Your face is out there for all to see, all the time.  You just get used to it.  Your naked or near naked body is like a fresh, mean surprise every Memorial Day.  Somehow you hope that winter has been kind and that you’ll get naked and people will gasp with delight.  Or at least not shudder.  That all those vitamins and jogs and cutting back on drinking during the week will have made a big difference.   That things will be as they once were, when the only time you truly looked horrid in a bathing suit was when you were buying it due to the horrifying lighting at most department stores.  Well, the truth is, now you’ll always be sort of horrid.  At least substantially more horrid than you were at 16.  Or 21.  Or, goddamnit, 30.    It is just the deal.  It’s as if your body is saying, in an insidious whispery little voice “Happy spring, sorry to disappoint  but you look much worse than last year and you will continue to decline. ”   I suppose the good news is you don’t need to cut back on the drinking during the week.  Nothing will help.  And I am sure there is a slight upside to all of this.  These changes will, I promise, result in a long marriage.  Seems crazy but I believe, though I have no scientific data to back me up,  that these tiny physical changes are the leading cause in marriages surviving until death.  Because I know that all of my friends live in deathly fear of EVER having to remove their clothing in close proximity to any male who doesn’t ignore them when they’re naked.  If someone actually gazed at them naked, I think my friends would all die of fright.  And an affair isn’t an affair without getting good and naked and gazing.  “Remember that?” she sighs. So, trust me on this one…no affair, married until death.  The upside of a droopy body. Sort of  Marriage counselors need to push this point more frequently.

Despite my resignation, I’m still trying to keep the underarm jiggle at bay but little works.  I do my sit ups.  I’m trying to keep my calories down but my body doesn’t seem to care.  I eat tons of salad.  I’m trying to drink less and meditate more but, truthfully, drinking is more fun.  I’m trying to figure out how to love myself as I am and wear each jiggle and drip of flesh proudly.   To know that my crappy neck is the product of years of fun living, The Apartment gave me kids and that I can’t resent my husband because he doesn’t have a crappy neck, a droopy butt or even wrinkles.  To understand that people will always love me for who I AM not how I look in a bikini.  Or a one piece.  Or one of those skirt bathing suits.  Or a burqa.  Where do you get a burqa?

Happy Memorial Day!