Brave Girl Eating Read Online Free PDF

She begged for a subscription to Gourmet magazine.
    I’d been trying to get Kitty to cook with me since she was three years old, to no avail. Was it possible for a child who had never shown the slightest interest in baking chocolate chip cookies to suddenly care about making a roux? Maybe I’d simply been boring her all these years with my pedestrian suggestions for brownies or spaghetti, and now her gourmet abilities were making themselves known. That didn’t exactly feel like the right explanation. But then what was going on?
    I grew suspicious—of what, exactly, I couldn’t say—and then questioned my own suspicions. I’d always been a practical cook, more apt to produce a one-pot casserole than an elaborate menu. Was I threatened by Kitty’s new expertise in the kitchen? What kind of mother was I, to be wary of my daughter’s new interest? Why couldn’t I just support it? Talking about food was the only thing that made her eyes light up. Even gymnastics, which she’d loved for years, seemed more of a chore than a pleasure these days.
    The thing was, she didn’t actually eat what she cooked. A bite here, a nibble there, that’s all. She always had a reason: this dish upset her stomach, she wasn’t in the mood for that one. Jamie andEmma and I ate what she cooked, and it was delicious. But still Kitty’s behavior left a bitter aftertaste.
    I started watching her. Watching what she ate, and didn’t eat. Watching the way goose bumps ran up her arms on a sunny afternoon. How her head suddenly looked too big for her body.
    At her eighth-grade graduation in early June, Kitty wore a blaze-orange halter dress she’d borrowed from a neighbor. From across the crowded gymnasium, I saw my daughter with different eyes, away from the usual context of our lives, and what I saw made my heart begin to pound. In an auditorium crowded with eighth graders, she was by far the thinnest girl in the room.
    As the other parents in the bleachers clapped and cheered, Jamie and I sat alone. It was as if someone had turned off the sound. When I dared look at my husband, I saw my own terror mirrored in his eyes. We didn’t say a word; we didn’t have to. The next morning I called Dr. Beth’s office and took the first appointment offered—for the end of June, three weeks away.
    If I’d said it was an emergency, we could have gotten in earlier. But I felt oddly fatalistic about the appointment. We would take the time they gave us, and until then, I told myself, I would stop worrying about it. Stop thinking about it. I knew, then, on some level; but I still didn’t want to know. I was engaged in the magical thinking of denial. If I don’t get upset about this, it won’t be a big deal. I’m a writer; putting things into words is not only what I do, it’s how I think and feel and process the world. But I didn’t think in words about what was wrong with Kitty, and I certainly didn’t say them out loud.
    Over the next three weeks, Jamie and I behaved like travelers stranded on a small and isolated island. We knew the big ship would come, and that once it did, everything would be different. We were scared of the change that was approaching and also anxious for it,and so for those three weeks we lived in limbo, in the time between before and after .
    Usually, I talk to Jamie about everything. In our relationship, I’m the garrulous one; talking to him helps me figure out what I think and how I feel. And over the twentysome years we’ve been together, my naturally taciturn husband has come to appreciate and participate in the process of hashing things out aloud. But I didn’t talk to him about Kitty now. I could see some of my feelings mirrored in his face—fear and distress and hope—but he did not bring them up, and I didn’t ask. I longed for the day of the appointment, when Kitty’s doctor would put a name on what was