by Kathy Carr
She knitted me a mauve sweater vest
with an owl on the front. She didn't know
I didn't like any shade of pink. Or sweaters.
Or owls. But I knew she was waiting
for my reaction as I opened the reused Macy's
shirt box, edges worn and jagged strips
of brown showing along the sides where tape
from years past had pulled up the white.
The vest had probably taken a long time to knit.
The owl was an intricate raised pattern,
its beak stuck out into a fuzzy point.
She'd even attached huge googly eyes to it.
I'm sure I would have loved it ten years
earlier. “Oh boy,” I managed, pulling
the handmade monstrosity from the wrinkled
white tissue paper.
“Feel it. It's soft,” she said in her childish
sing-song voice. I pressed it to my face.
It smelled like Grandpa; like an old man's
cologne. And like their fat toy poodle's
flea powder.
The owl vest wasn't the first thing
Grandma knitted for me. She made
slippers once, with pom-poms on them.
They were perfectly wonderful slippers -
in them, I could glide around our kitchen
floor like Kristi Yamaguchi.
I wonder if knitting was therapeutic to her.
If it helped to know that she was creating
something out of nothing.
Did it help her briefly forget about the stillbirths?
Did it help to set aside the helplessness
she must have felt when her oldest
son lost his hearing?
Or the crippling depression that followed?
Did knitting undo any of the damage
caused by the shock treatments?
Did it help her forget losing a grandson?
Or her sister, Beulah? The sister her parents
had institutionalized as a child? The one
we found out about after Grandma died?
Did she knit one, pearl two? Or did her fingers
automatically move without conscious
thought, needles clicking, yarn snaking up
from her basket, sweater vest growing like a baby
in her lap? Did she imagine me as the slippers
took shape – her granddaughter dancing
in them, alive and full of laughter?
Did her hands tremble like they do now?
I ask myself these things now,
after she's been gone a long time.
Back then, all I saw was an ugly
mauve sweater vest
that I would never wear. A waste
of time. A failure of a present.
Like a good girl, I told her “thank you”.
Then I kissed her on her velvety cheek
and wished for something more.
Showing posts with label Kathy Carr. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kathy Carr. Show all posts
Friday, January 28, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Size Matters
by Kathy Carr
Jugs. Knockers. Wazoomies. Breasts have many aliases. Some names are used to indicate size, others to indicate function, and still others are used by rappers and street people who rely on slang for the majority of their vernacular. The fact that you can call breasts by so many names shows just how important this area of a woman's anatomy is.
From the time a girl is old enough to speak, she dreams about what it must be like to have men stare slack-jawed at her voluptuous breasts. As she plays with her Barbie doll, admiring the chesty perfection Mattel achieved, she imagines what it's like to be a Baywatch babe with huge melons bursting from her chest. The day her mother tells her that she needs a training bra is a day no girl will ever forget for that is the day she becomes a women. On the contrary, it is a truly cheerless day when a blossoming young woman realizes she will not likely be well-endowed. All hope is not lost, but she must walk with a bounce and wear extraordinarily tight, low-cut blouses to compensate if she ever hopes to garner any male attention. If she is lucky, some charitable young man will see past her lack of cleavage and ask her out. She may have to develop a “loose” reputation in order to achieve this, but that is certainly a better alternative to becoming a flat-chested old maid.
Some unenlightened people think that males ought not to be fixated on bosoms. Yet, men cannot help it, they are naturally drawn toward large breasts. It's like they are planets – the larger the planet, the greater the gravitational pull. Some scientists have stated that this has something to do with mating – that subconsciously men know that women who wear at least a D-cup will be better equipped to nourish his offspring. Although this is a myth, it is true that while a woman is breastfeeding, her “girls” increase in size – until the child is weaned when they shrivel up like raisins. This might explain why some women choose to engage in what is termed “extended breastfeeding”.
Once a man has chosen a wife – based, of course, on the size of her personality – one would be inclined to believe that he will love her no matter what nature does to her body. And he will, so long as he makes enough money to have her breasts enlarged, or at the very least lifted, should they become droopy as she ages. Paying out large sums of money in order to improve your wife's appearance may seem like quite a sacrifice. However, most men are willing to suffer with empty pockets as long as they have their hands full.
Incredibly, despite how flattered they might be, many women say they feel objectified when a man's gaze continually wanders to her chest. They claim that men should make eye contact and use phrases like “Hey, fella, I'm up here” while pointing to their faces. Even harder to believe is the fact that some ladies actually think it's improper to display even a hint of cleavage saying that it just encourages men to think of women as nothing more than a pair of boobs with a body attached. It should probably be noted that the majority of females who hold this opinion have breasts which look like half-filled water balloons hanging down to their belly buttons. Perhaps their selfish husbands ought to fork out the cash to have those balloons refilled. It should not matter if paying for breast implants means there might not be food on the table; ignorant people such as these could probably stand to lose a few pounds anyway.
Even so, women unlucky enough to be lacking in the mammillary department can take comfort in the fact that they do not live in a third world country where the saggy breasts of bare-chested females might end up on the cover of a magazine like National Geographic. What pitiful creatures these women are – having no idea that they look so hideous and yet having their flaws exposed to the whole world. Imperfect breasts need not fear such cruel exposure in a more socially developed culture where there are more dignified publications in which gentlemen may study the artistry of a naked bosom. Here, imperfections are actually airbrushed away in order to spare the young lady the indignity of having her stretch marks, blemishes, or even surgical scars ogled by the masses.
Yes, society has come a long way since the days when only women who'd lost their breasts to cancer were lucky enough to receive breast implants. Gone are the days when a woman had to work hard to prove her worth to a company; even CEOs recognize that women with less-than-ideal breasts are simply not as intelligent as women with huge jugs. Still, our culture has a long way to before women everywhere will have a chance at making it big.
As the great plastic surgeon Chester McBustington once said, “I have a dream that one day breast augmentation will be considered a medical necessity. When we make insurance companies pay in every village and every hamlet, in every city and state, we will speed up that day when all the sexy ladies – black women and white women, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics – will be able to bare their chests together and sing the words of the old super-model theme song, 'D at last, D at last, thank God Almighty, I'm a D at last.'”
Jugs. Knockers. Wazoomies. Breasts have many aliases. Some names are used to indicate size, others to indicate function, and still others are used by rappers and street people who rely on slang for the majority of their vernacular. The fact that you can call breasts by so many names shows just how important this area of a woman's anatomy is.
From the time a girl is old enough to speak, she dreams about what it must be like to have men stare slack-jawed at her voluptuous breasts. As she plays with her Barbie doll, admiring the chesty perfection Mattel achieved, she imagines what it's like to be a Baywatch babe with huge melons bursting from her chest. The day her mother tells her that she needs a training bra is a day no girl will ever forget for that is the day she becomes a women. On the contrary, it is a truly cheerless day when a blossoming young woman realizes she will not likely be well-endowed. All hope is not lost, but she must walk with a bounce and wear extraordinarily tight, low-cut blouses to compensate if she ever hopes to garner any male attention. If she is lucky, some charitable young man will see past her lack of cleavage and ask her out. She may have to develop a “loose” reputation in order to achieve this, but that is certainly a better alternative to becoming a flat-chested old maid.
Some unenlightened people think that males ought not to be fixated on bosoms. Yet, men cannot help it, they are naturally drawn toward large breasts. It's like they are planets – the larger the planet, the greater the gravitational pull. Some scientists have stated that this has something to do with mating – that subconsciously men know that women who wear at least a D-cup will be better equipped to nourish his offspring. Although this is a myth, it is true that while a woman is breastfeeding, her “girls” increase in size – until the child is weaned when they shrivel up like raisins. This might explain why some women choose to engage in what is termed “extended breastfeeding”.
Once a man has chosen a wife – based, of course, on the size of her personality – one would be inclined to believe that he will love her no matter what nature does to her body. And he will, so long as he makes enough money to have her breasts enlarged, or at the very least lifted, should they become droopy as she ages. Paying out large sums of money in order to improve your wife's appearance may seem like quite a sacrifice. However, most men are willing to suffer with empty pockets as long as they have their hands full.
Incredibly, despite how flattered they might be, many women say they feel objectified when a man's gaze continually wanders to her chest. They claim that men should make eye contact and use phrases like “Hey, fella, I'm up here” while pointing to their faces. Even harder to believe is the fact that some ladies actually think it's improper to display even a hint of cleavage saying that it just encourages men to think of women as nothing more than a pair of boobs with a body attached. It should probably be noted that the majority of females who hold this opinion have breasts which look like half-filled water balloons hanging down to their belly buttons. Perhaps their selfish husbands ought to fork out the cash to have those balloons refilled. It should not matter if paying for breast implants means there might not be food on the table; ignorant people such as these could probably stand to lose a few pounds anyway.
Even so, women unlucky enough to be lacking in the mammillary department can take comfort in the fact that they do not live in a third world country where the saggy breasts of bare-chested females might end up on the cover of a magazine like National Geographic. What pitiful creatures these women are – having no idea that they look so hideous and yet having their flaws exposed to the whole world. Imperfect breasts need not fear such cruel exposure in a more socially developed culture where there are more dignified publications in which gentlemen may study the artistry of a naked bosom. Here, imperfections are actually airbrushed away in order to spare the young lady the indignity of having her stretch marks, blemishes, or even surgical scars ogled by the masses.
Yes, society has come a long way since the days when only women who'd lost their breasts to cancer were lucky enough to receive breast implants. Gone are the days when a woman had to work hard to prove her worth to a company; even CEOs recognize that women with less-than-ideal breasts are simply not as intelligent as women with huge jugs. Still, our culture has a long way to before women everywhere will have a chance at making it big.
As the great plastic surgeon Chester McBustington once said, “I have a dream that one day breast augmentation will be considered a medical necessity. When we make insurance companies pay in every village and every hamlet, in every city and state, we will speed up that day when all the sexy ladies – black women and white women, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics – will be able to bare their chests together and sing the words of the old super-model theme song, 'D at last, D at last, thank God Almighty, I'm a D at last.'”
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