What Once Was…Write

At 53, try as she might, she cannot remember a single day in her life when she felt attractive. Never mind pretty. Beautiful is straight out of the question. And, at 53 and fairly well-worn by life and circumstances, that day is not likely to dawn anytime soon.

Sometimes, when she is down (which is a lot) or tired (all the time) images of herself appear and move slowly in her mind, cycling through like a Powerpoint presentation.

There’s one from the day she was on the Poopdeck Paul kids’ TV show at age six. She wanted to wear her pink taffeta party dress but her mom said, “no, wear your blue plaid skirt and matching sweater.” So she did. Then she spent the entire time on the show – which featured a bowling competition – watching the other little girl competitors in their party dresses and staring at her own, plain outfit in the TV monitors. She bowled horribly and lost, then began to sob on live TV when Poopdeck Paul himself handed over the first place trophy and all the prizes to another girl who stood there smiling and victorious in HER pink taffeta party dress.

In another image, she is a gangly 10-year-old – all legs – getting her hair cut at a fancy Detroit salon. Her aunt had her own, personal hairdresser – an elegant, perfectly coiffed, silver-haired gentleman named “Prince,” as he was both formerly AND formally known. His  real name was Prentice. He owned his own shop – with his much older wife – yet he actually drove to his customer’s home, picked up the aunt in his ruby-red Cadillac, drove back to the shop and performed his once weekly magic on her hair.

That late summer day, she rode along with the aunt for her own hair appointment. She enjoyed the drive to the shop in the red convertible – loved the sun and breeze on a summer day, loved listening to the grown-up talk in the front seat as the Prince and the Aunt chatted and laughed, excited about getting her hair “done” at a real salon! Two hours later, she sat miserably the  back seat, quiet and unhappy, peeking up every other minute to look through red-rimmed eyes at her hair, as reflected in the rearview mirror. Prince had clipped her thick, frizzy brown hair incredibly short – Audrey Hepburn short – all around, leaving a half-inch row of bangs – Moe Howard of the Three Stooges-style – across the front of her head.

It wasn’t long and blonde and straight and silky the way she had imagined that a Prince could magically transform her hair. It was ugly and thin and short – scalped, nearly – and made her head look unbelievably tiny while at the same time forcing her body to look enormous in comparison. She spent the weekend in her bed, sobbing and hiding her head under a pillow, wondering if she could get by with wearing a stocking cap until she turned 14.

She couldn’t. Her bushy, unmanageable hair is far longer in the next image – taken at 14, the night of her eighth-grade graduation. It’s an image that exists in a real Kodak moment that rests somewhere in the bottom of a pile of old family photographs, hidden away for decades. It’s a fuzzy, Polaroid picture her brother snapped of her as she opened a graduation gift from their mother. The gift is a Louisville slugger baseball bat (she always was an avid Detroit Tigers fan). In the image, she is grinning broadly and thrusting the new bat toward the camera. Her hair is horrible – frizzy and out-of-place – but the rest of her is even worse.

She is wearing a pink knit dress adorned with gold buttons down the front and tied – somewhat unfortunately – around her pudgy waist. The dress is a size 18 to accommodate her 180-pound, body that is already riddled with stretch marks. Her rectangular, black plastic framed eyeglasses, which she must wear all the time just to make her way through her fuzzy world, are like huge scabs resting on her broad, blotchy, sweaty cheeks. In the photo, she looks like a mentally challenged 40-year-old as she brandishes the gift bat that could, in an instant she thinks, turn into a weapon to use against the boys who moo and bark at her every day as she walks down the street to school.

Just a week before graduation, her eighth-grade class had taken a day trip to a local amusement park. It was on an island in the Detroit River – Boblo Island – and the only way to get there was on a huge boat. A boy who was her good friend – the one who understood her humor and her intelligence and love for sports and her disdain for most people – said he would ride all the rides with her once they got to the island. Did she mind, though, that he really couldn’t let anyone see them together on the island? That they’d have to ride rides together “by accident” because he had promised Cindy – blonde, pretty, skinny Cindy who wore blue eyeshadow and showed off her tan thighs in white, short-shorts – that he would be her boyfriend that day and hold hands with her.

She couldn’t argue. What could she say? How could she compete? She was fat and pasty white. Her hair was kinky and frizzy in the early summer heat. She hadn’t worn shorts in public in four years. Sweat rolled down her face, diverting around the acne pimples and scars that dotted that sad landscape. The sweat stung her eyes and dripped onto the legs of her stiff jeans – her size 18 jeans. Burned into the image from that day is Cindy, flipping her long, pretty blonde hair and covering her lovely blue eyes with cool sunglasses. Suddenly, there is the boy – her friend – striding toward Cindy and quickly putting great distance between himself and his friend. She watches as they go off, hand-in-hand, whispering and laughing. Then she gets off the boat with his apologies ringing in her ears and sits alone on a bench for the next seven hours until it is time for the boat ride back home.

Other images flash by as her brain clicks faster through the Powerpoint. A humid summer day at age 15 and she is dressed in a bulky navy sweater and white jeans imprinted with large red and blue squares. Her curly hair is flat and dull, pasted down on her head with some sort of gel.  Her fat cheeks are imprinted with the marks from her glasses that no longer fit her face at all. She looks miserable and she is.

Here’s one from her first day on a college campus. She lumbers across the campus – alone – feeling ugly and out-of-place among scores of thin, pretty young women all looking like cast members from Charlie’s Angels. Dressed entirely in brown polyester, she’s looking more like a middle-aged cafeteria lady than a college coed. Sloppy Joes anyone?

There’s another from her wedding day: she is not a wedding gown person and that day – especially that day – she should have known it. She had dieted for months and was down to a size 12 but in her off-white, plain satin gown with a short veil held by a clumsy floral wreath…she still looked like a sad and graceless spinster trying to fool too many people. Shades of Miss Havisham.

There are many other slides in this Powerpoint. Shots of her, much younger, spending miserable days on the beach dressed like all the other old women while the tan, thin 20-somethings frolicked nearby. Jealous glances at Facebook photos of the cute new girlfriends – with their straight teeth, athletic bodies and smooth hair – of old boyfriends and classmates. Uncomfortable afternoons trapped in business meetings wearing last year’s business suit – fitting a little too tightly and bearing ragged cuffs and sagging shoulder pads.

She hardly ever looks at the text in the Powerpoint. Still, sometimes, because she is a writer and a thinker and can no longer bear to look at any more photos, certain words will catch her eye and draw her attention away.

Like this, from a love letter written too many years too late: “You are a wonderful person, full of love, joy, humor and beauty.  You can make a room light up when you come in.  There are people who literally owe you their lives.  You are one of a kind.”

Or this, whispered just yesterday: “I cannot imagine not being with you for the rest of my life.”

Or this emailed from a former coworker and friend: “You are brilliant and funny and competent…maybe too competent for your colleagues to understand. And sometimes, you have to swallow your pride and let them think THEY came up with idea. You can do that because you are an amazing person.”

Yeah, she’s not pretty. Never will be. But when she reads the fine print, she guesses that, in the end, she’ll do in a pinch.