Does This Child Make Me Look Fat?

Being a person of ridiculous height and substantial proportions, I am becoming acutely aware of how huge bloody (that doesn't count as a swear word does it? Oh fuck it probably does) massive I look next to my 3 year old. Over the years I've become quite deft at minimizing the size difference between myself and others. When having photos taken with shorter, tinier people, or trying to blend in at social gatherings: I sit, I crouch, I slouch and attempt to expel all the oxygen in my body in order to shave a few inches off my outline. Not so easy when trying to nab a photo with a healthy bouncy boy.

So I'm trying to resign myself to appearing positively ginormous in the pictures and videos we take as we archive these years of our family's life. After all, it's next-to-impossible to get a half-decent picture of all of us together, so if that means I'm towering over Pre-Schooler N, and the perennially-svelte Professor D, then so be it.

It's an entirely different matter trying to explain the difference in our sizes to said child. "Here Papa, come into my little house that I made," should have been the first clue that my dignity was due for a further pummeling. Oh, it's not that I mind being able to fit only my head and torso into the blanket tent he made under his baby blue breakfast table (under $100 from Ikea!).  It was the mortification at getting stuck under the damn thing -- and the resultant eschewing of my erstwhile vow not to swear around the son in question.

Oh the indignity. But there's something about parenthood that seems to eradicate personal pride when it comes to our adult bodies. Maybe it's because we've spent so much time scraping poop out of the kid's arse, or trying to explain in hushed tones precisely why it's ill-advised to expose our private parts to the other shoppers at Loblaws. Kids have such an innate insouciance around  nudity and bodily functions... I guess it just rubs off on us at some point.  Along with the rest of their goopy, snotty and otherwise unmentionable excreta.

Nowhere else has this been more evident than Pre-Schooler N's own observations of my middle-aged body. Stretch marks seem a particular fascination for him, much to my chagrin. Being an exceptionally pale person, the stretch marks I gained while reaching 6'4 in height (not to mention a few dalliances with obesity) are of the vivid scarlet variety, even now that my weight's reached a pretty stable and manageable plateau. If observed by the casual onlooker, I would generally deflect notice by stating that I had been a chorus member in one of the earlier productions of Miss Saigon, and stood a little too close to the helicopter's blades as it descended onstage.

Now I'm at an utter loss how to explain them. My son was at first a little alarmed, asking with great concern about my"boo-boos". Now he simply amuses himself by tracing them until I giggle like the Pillsbury Doughboy. Charming. But aside from the puncturing of my carefully-crafted body ego, I'm realizing that this new sloughing of unnecessary dignity is actually a great gift.

I don't fret anymore about swimming in public. I don't worry so much when some snap-happy reveler whips out their iPhone to catalogue every second of life (for godsake people, put the cameras down and LIVE a little). And I now look at my body with a little more kindness and affection than I did before my son looked at me one night and told me I was pretty like a princess.

Yes, I know, I'm mildly appalled, not to mention mystified how and where he got that sort of idea of princesses being pretty, and that we should value people on their looks or royal pedigree. But I can't lie. Somewhere deep inside me, there's a voice saying loud and clear:

"Squee! I'm a pretty princess!!!"