Smaller (Spoken)

I wore size ten shoes in 4th grade. Guess my path would never be adorned with sparkles or rainbows. Because department stores, they don’t carry the pretty shoes in the big girl sizes. And no, eager salesgirl with the saccharin smile and teacup feet, I do not want to try on those sneakers in a Men’s 8. I think out of spite, she mailed a Big & Tall shoe catalog to my house. I just wanted to be smaller.

At recess, I was always the piggy back ride giver, the swing pusher, the pyramid base. Never the rider, never the swinger, and certainly never the top. Between hopscotch and monkey bars, girls whose weight watcher mothers taught them the calories in a Rice Krispie treat but not a single ounce of sensitivity they would ask, “Hey Koren, what do you weigh?” “I’m big boned” I’d say apologetically with a hint of Hostess cupcake eating shame. A failure for hitting triple digits before middle school. A failure for wearing my thick-strapped grandma bra digging rivets into my shoulders. A failure for thighs that rubbed together long before anyone had named the aspirational “thigh gap.” Swathed in my insecurity blanket, I was a woman hiding among girls. I just wanted to be smaller.

High school gym class, Darwin’s playground of the haves and have-nots. Them, a blurred movie montage of countless cartwheels in perfectly fitted gym shorts. Me, not. Me, the rotten apple of my gym teacher’s disapproving eye. Eluded by a single pushup and the shiny bell at the top of the rope. Years of believing I just wasn’t trying hard enough and begging to be smaller.

If I were just smaller, short boys wouldn’t be intimidated by my height, just my GPA. And those football players in the pep rally wouldn’t have called me “gorilla” (true story), the kill shot to my fragile teen confidence. If I had smaller hands, grandma’s pearl ring might fit on a finger other than my pinkie. A smaller nose and Dad might actually tell me I’m beautiful. A smaller butt and maybe my first husband would have loved me enough for ME to be enough.

But like an adolescent celestial star, collapsing inward before exploding into light I tired of shrinking, I gave up diminishing, and stopped sucking in my worth.

Accepting I will always be big boned with big feet, big thighs, big teeth, and a big nose. Realizing those feet, while still a bitch to find cute shoes, they carry me on my runs and to all the births and weddings, sunsets and sunrises of my life. Feeling, my big thighs, lift heavy weight as well as my burdens. Seeing my big nose and big teeth are beautiful in my daughter’s reflection.

These days, the only things I want to be smaller are my insecurities, my impatience and most of all my intolerance. The big things that matter, they aren’t body parts, they’re BIG ideas driven by BIG commitment and BIG passion. I strive daily for a bigger heart, bigger understanding, bigger love. And a big, BIG life.