#3 Picture a photo...

Picture a photo from your childhood, one you know well. Narrate the scene around the taking of that photo, the best of your memory.

This one is hard for me. My childhood was in many ways idyllic. My grandmother moved in with us when I was very small and after my parents had divorced. This was both good and bad - good in the fact that there was always someone home and bad because there was always someone home.

I think my mother never felt like the house was truly hers and I understand that feeling. Living with a parent automatically makes you revert to the behaviors you had as a child. Hopefully your father and I won't ever have to live with you. We're planning on not having to anyway.

Anyway, the photo I'm thinking of was definitely taken in the 70s. Probably 1974 or 1975. I was very small; small enough to fit in one of those little folding lawn chairs made for children. My father had rigged it up as a makeshift swing and had hung it from the limb of a large tree in the front yard of my grandparent's farm.

The farm was in its infancy back then and there was barely anything there except a barn and a camper. Even with the lack of amenities, we had such a good time there. There was a fire pit that we lit in the evenings and sat around telling stories. My grandfather was mysterious to me and still very shadowed in my memories. He said he could call down the hoot owl from the mountains and made loud screeching noises. It wasn't five minutes before we could hear the owl screech back. I was TERRIFIED and still remember that to this day!

The picture I'm thinking of is probably lost now but I can see it so clearly. The greens of the leaves were vibrant and my father was juxtaposed on their background standing out clearly. He looked like every other picture of men from the 70s. Very "crunchy granola" with long, wavy hair and a bushy mustache. He had on a white t-shirt with blue flowers across the front. That shirt and his corduroy jacket are imprinted in my earliest memories.

He is looking at the camera, but both of his hands are on the legs of the lawn chair holding me forward and getting ready to swing me. I am laughing and smiling hugely in that picture. That picture of the time before.

#2 The dish your mom always cooked

The dish your mom always cooked that you wished she wouldn't. What did it look like, smell like, taste like?

I was fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by good cooks. My grandmother lived with us and cooked often and well. My mother was also a good cook with lots of specialty dishes that we all loved. But this post isn't about that, it's about what I wished they wouldn't cook.

Hands down, by far, the worst thing cooked in our house was cabbage! The funny (and good) thing is that cabbage tastes nothing like its smell and there is nothing quite like the smell of cooking cabbage. In my child's mind, I can smell two awful smells - the home permanent kit and cabbage!

I seriously can gag now just thinking about it and it has been quite a few years since I have smelled it quite like that. In the pot, the cabbage often turned a waxy yellowish-white color. The texture was surprisingly soft to bite though and the taste, while not my favorite thing, was definitely better than the smell. We cook cabbage now but it's often in the form of sauerkraut, which has a much different smell (still strong but in a better way than boiled cabbage). 

So, by far, my fervent childhood wish was that my mother or grandmother would not cook cabbage in the house!

#1 Write a letter to the teacher (or coach)

Write a letter to the teacher (or coach) who made a difference in your life, asking him or her for help. What are you asking for? Why?

Dear Coach David,

I need your help. I need you to go back to the 1980s and change the conversation. When I originally thought to sit and write this letter, I thought I would write about something silly like "make me like to exercise"  -  ha! Unfortunately, I probably need help with that one, too but this letter is not about that.

What I really want is for you to teach us that our conversation and habits will eternally affect our body image. We will forever worry about what we look like in a swimsuit; worry whether our husbands, boyfriends, partners find us attractive; worry that what we wear will somehow irrevokeably change the course of our lives; worry that our parent will bring it up for the thousandth time in conversation only about how bad she looks, when it is absolutely untrue.

Please get us back to that time of innocence, when we were starting to be conscious of our bodies and change the conversation to one of health and strength and inner beauty rather than the one we were bombarded with daily. You're too fat, too ugly, too stinky, too bad... That's what we heard every day and from everywhere: parents, friends, magazines, televisions, radio. In fact, I can't recall a day in recent history where I haven't seen or heard something that tells me I'm wrong and that I need to focus on something that will make me right.

Those things are empty - no amount of plastic surgery, bariatric surgery, makeup, spray, deodorant, lotion can fill the place in us that has been assured that what we are is not enough and will never be enough. Our imperfect perfection is not good enough for the worldly standard that our society has set. Some people spend a whole life trying to find the perfection and miss out on so much.

So Coach David, take us back to those formative years and tell us...well tell us that we are enough. Change he conversation from what is imperfect to one that we can control. I can control how strong I feel. Tell me that my inner strength is my greatest asset and it will see me through everything else. Nothing external matters as much as the inner core of me and how I feel about me.

Your friend,

Tara