I Liked My Mother Better Fat
Hello from Florida, one of the last places a transgender person should be in the so-called United States starting in a few weeks. I'm here for the unveiling of my grandfather's tombstone and, appropriately for the event, a lot of trauma has reared its head less then 24 hours since my plane touched runway.
Somehow, though, the one that I actually poured tears over was surprise photos of my mother skinny at a New Years Eve party.
My mother's side of the family is the one more overtly damaged by Jewish assimilation into the so-called US. My great-great-grandfather on my maternal grandmother's side was involved in politics in Brooklyn during a time where anti-Jewish sentiment was quite regular. My great-great-grandmother* was his second wife, married to him 6 months after his first wife's passing presumably because he needed a woman to help care for his baby son. Reportedly, she did raise that son as her own along with her own children, which included my great-grandmother**.
My great-grandmother had an older sister named Minnie who died at age 9 from pneumonia. The family never spoke of her again afterward. I uncovered her memory through my genealogy work and confirmed her life and death through records from the New York City government.
In Jewish culture, there is much pressure to assimilate through overachievement. I suppose with my grandfather's political interests there was additional reason to pressure the family to live a certain way and make certain choices. So my grandmother was overly concerned about my mother staying skinny as she was growing up and put her on horrendous diets such as beet and vanilla ice cream-only stints. Unsurprisingly, my mother hates her body.
My mother also has a lot of trouble understanding me because the family trauma's obsession with upward mobility has difficulty making room for a child that is transgender and neurodivergent. This does not mean my mother doesn't try. But she has made it very clear multiple times that she is not capable nor is she willing to work through that trauma.
So when she takes one of these new weight loss medications that allows her to wear smaller sizes at over age 60 and lines up with her blonde, skinny country club friends looking exactly like them, she feels happiness, pride, and achievement. I, on the other hand, see that my mother very literally shrank herself to fit a mold prized by white supremacy ideologies. I see that my mother cut away her uniqueness, the natural body given to her by Jewish genes, and what made her soft and maternal-shaped.
And so I cry because I can save me, but I cannot save her.
*Jennie, who through my then-living grandmother Natalie a few years ago I was to understand was thrilled I was learning Yiddish on Duolingo
**Mollie, who was the first ancestor through a paid reading to approach me. She adored my mother.
