Luck would have it that, now that I am at my heaviest,
it is the time to order many things online.
A cosmic joke, me searching and hoping things come in my size.
But, I decided to bite the bullet, having already gone big AND gone home,
so two weeks ago I jumped head-first into the abyss:
I ordered two swimsuits from Shein.
I checked reviews, and read size guides, and just chucked out all my fears.
My girls had ordered successfully from them before.
What could go wrong?
Worst case I’d wear the old stomach binding, snooze-fest one my mom accidentally left here when she visited for yet another year.
I felt pretty hopeful, knowing the styles that I’d picked were ones that usually suited my shape.
I’m 43 and not in denial about the reality of my form.
I’ve had 4 kids and health issues.
Sports Illustrated is not at my door.
My 14 year old rail child asked me if I’d checked the “Find My Shape” tool.
I told her I didn’t need to.
My shape was “Circle with lots of other circles.”
For two weeks I waited, hopeful, for those suits to cross the miles from somewhere in Asia, tracking notices like a daily siren’s song, wooing me to dream of them somehow looking as good on me as they had on the models.
They were coming in hot for me.
I could feel it in my big bones.
I haven’t had a new bathing suit since about 2016,
and that was just a top from Walmart that ended up sun bleached by day two, that had joined two hand-me-down maternity suits in a bin lovingly named the Swimsuit Island of Misfit Toys.
(One of THOSE suits wanted to be a dentist.
I knew by how it crept, determined, towards my skull.)
Yesterday those Shein swimsuits came and I just looked at the sealed package for awhile.
Three hours later I took them out and lay them draped over a dining room chair where I could casually walk by them and give the side-eye.
(You never look a new swimsuit head-on)
For a half a day I left them there, and kept just walking by like we all needed time to warm up to one another.
Maybe go out for coffee, or catch a movie…
One need not rush this kind of relationship.
Time between the wild hope of order confirmation day and what happens when you try them on.
I knew that the day could end with an impingement death, muscles cramping in the bathroom,
and trying to weakly call out for someone.
Finally, I faced myself and decided it was time.
I gathered those suits without a word, and went in the bathroom to put them on.
If it wasn’t for being half naked, I would have given anything to film the moment I pulled on suit number one.
All was going fairly well until the moment that it stopped pulling,
and I realized that it was because the neckline came to just below my rib cage.
The width was looking perfect.
The torso was one foot high.
I may have been able to pull it off as a daring plunging neck-line,
except that when I pulled on the shoulder straps they were way too tight.
Immediately it snapped my body into a ghastly shape.
Now hunched over like Quasimodo,
knuckles dragging like an ape,
boobs squashed down flatter than in a mammogram,
I hobbled to the door and quietly opened it and exited to present myself to my Jr. High daughters’ critiques – The moment of a mother’s dreams.
My 12 year old gasped and covered her mouth.
Her eyes like satellites.
She looked back and forth from that suit to my face like she was trying to gauge my eyes.
But I allowed my face give her nothing.
I wanted to see what she would say, so I stood expressionless.
Confused if she was supposed to be honest, or say she would now need intensive therapy,
she just stayed that way, cupping her mouth and breathing in.
I think she nearly passed out, she inhaled so long.
Like she forgot how to NOT breathe in.
I imagine she was scared to comment in case “Isn’t it great?!” is what I ended up blurting out.
After several torturous seconds where both girls were, for the first time in their lives, rendered speechless and unable to even utter opinions, I released them from purgatory with,
“WHAT ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH IS THIS THING?!” and relief flooded their eyes.
Thank God their mother didn’t WANT TO KEEP IT.
Thank God they could still live their life and not worry about being driven to some public pool come July where I would disrobe and reveal THAT visual torture device!
Being seen with me in that suit would surely end their lives.
They’ve already survived wildfires and a pandemic.
They need at least one thing to go right!
“You don’t…..like it?” Tessa said carefully, clearly worried how to step.
“NO, I DON’T LIKE IT!” I said from somewhere deep inside the curve of my own chest.
“It’s contorting me to death! I cannot walk or raise my arms.
Please look at what used to be my boobs.
Whose shoulders start one foot from their hips?
I’d go viral if this was on YouTube!”
We laughed a real long time with me standing there in the hall.
(Mostly because it had taken all my energy to even walk that far at all.)
Suit number two only pulled up to just above my knees.
It had seen its friend.
It knew when to quit.
It practically filled out its own return request.
Needless to say, they’re on their way back across the sea.
This summer catch me in the sun in what looks like Mormon-wear.
T-shirt and yoga pants in the water, just sticking to the tried and true friends that have never once tried to herniate a disc.
I gave it a shot.
Took one for the team.
“Shein: The More You Know.”
The “Find My Shape tool” has my results –
“You’ve been curled into an ‘O.”
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
