Unmasked at the pool
‘We’ll meet at the pool,’ they said. ‘Bring your bathers.’
They were twenty-something mums. I was a forty-something mum with a ‘bonus baby’ (the baby you have when your other ones are big enough to tie their own shoelaces, run their own baths or even drive their own cars).
I used to be a twenty-something mum. I used to spend most of the summer at the pool with my other babies. Then, ‘forty-something’ meant kilos to me. With a bikini top nicely rounded out by lactating bosoms, I didn’t have a body image problem. Nowadays, if it wasn’t all so soft (and so far south) I’d be nicely rounded all over. The babies I had when I was a twenty-something mum do nothing to enhance my fragile body image. ‘Blue goes with everything,’ they tell me. It’s the varicose veins they are referring to. Today I’m a mistress of camouflage. I know just what to wear to conceal my biggest assets. But – at the pool? T-shirts over bathers are fine – until they are wet!
Before the Bonus Baby became a socialite, I used to put him into the pool with the big kids. Later, he loved being taken to the pool by a big brother (the bonus for the big brother was that the Bonus Baby was a babe-magnet). But this time I was trapped. Big sweet-eyes with his curly lashes looked trustingly up at me. It was bathers on for both of us – no excuses – and into the pool with all the trim, taut, terrific twenty-something mums and their kids. And the nanas (or were they also mothers of Bonus Babies?). And the granddads (or were they just older fathers?). Splashing and playing, laughing and yelling and playing ‘ring-a-rosie’. Well, at least I could keep my face out of the water, couldn’t I?
Uh-oh. Big sweet-eyes with curly lashes looked trustingly up at me, begging me to go under. Down I bobbed, with all the tots and their young mums. Up we came again. There I was, hair dripping, mascara running – completely unmasked. Big sweet-eyes looked up at me, smiling. I was smiling too. It felt just as good as it used to when I was a trim, taut, terrific, twenty-something mum.
Being bashful about body image isn’t a bonus. And, just to remind myself, I cut out a passage from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams and stuck it on the fridge.
‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, then you become real.’
‘Does it hurt?’ said the rabbit.
‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are real, you don’t mind being hurt.’
‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’
‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges or have to be carefully kept.
‘Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop off, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all because once you are real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’
I’m in between, a thirty-something Mum. Despite the changes to my body (including my once violent purple, but now faded ‘racing stripes’ tha covered me from belly button to thighs) after two babies and an angel in between them, I’m more comfortable now in my own skin than I ever was before. After being probed, examined, poked and looked at naked from every which way - not to mention the other fabulous perks of pregnancy and post natal life, like haemarroids and breasts that enter the room a full minute before the rest of you - I really don’t care anymore. And as paranoid as I might be on a low day about the size of my tummy or thighs, I know that practially every other woman in the pool is more preoccupied with worrying about her own body than mine.
As for the bathing suit issue, I heard someone at a Mum’s group say once “Ok, you’ve heard of beer goggles, right? A pint or two and everyone’s gorgeous. Well here we have swim goggles. Same deal.”
Thanks for the reminder about how precious it truly is to be loved by our little ones…the skin horse knows what he’s talking about!
Hi Pinky,
This is a great story and a good reminder of the many changes we all go through, whether a mom or not. I recently lost one of my knees and am learning to walk on a “new” knee, so I now sport a big long scar down my leg. But I’ll be at the pool along with everyone else when warm weather returns to the U.S.
Sue Painter
A brilliant insight Pinky! I remember bemoaning the incredible changes my body morphed through during and after my first pregnancy. If I could look like that now. However, as you so cleverly revealed in your blog, now I feel ‘real’ and I am happy as a clam with the ‘realness’ I have acquired since then!
Thanks for the memory lane walk.
Lynn
Hi Pinky,
This post made me laugh in the beginning, and then almost to tears at the end. It’s so true! Motherhood has such highs and lows but so very much worth it:)
Pinky - this really puts things in perspective - you are loved regardless, and by those who matter the most! I love this: “Big sweet-eyes with curly lashes looked trustingly up at me” (and love your mommy-baby logo too BTW) - Trudy
Hi Pinky,
This is a great reminder of the different changes we all go through. I am going to share this with some of my friends with Bonus Babies.
Although I am not a mother — I can certainly relate to the body image issues. I think we all have them regardless of our situation.
Write on!~
Lisa
Pinky -
This is a great post! What a blessing to be reminded about what it means to be ‘real’!
Terry
Pinky! What a beautiful post! I laughed and cried — wow! I just LOVE that quote from the Veleveteen Rabbit. I can’t read it aloud without tearing up — AND reading this came at just the perfect moment for me. I have created whole series of artworks and toured lecturing on body image, but sometimes I forget to apply the wisdom to myself!! THANK YOU for the gentle, loving reminder! ♥
Hope you are able to have more men read this so they understand what their partner is feeling and thinking. Thanks for sharing.
Pinky - I echo Mitch’s sentiments. I think sharing thoughts like this are critical to give us guys some perspective on what that “no longer 20-something” mum may be dealing with around body image.
Thanks for sharing,
Phil
Beautiful Pinky. Love, love, love it. I will think of this always as I venture to the pool or the beach. My children will be my guide and this really all that matters. Thanks for such an inspiring post.
Loretta