That’s when everything turned blue, swirling waves of green.  Catherine remembered in the waves, her father grabbing her mother by the arm, making her hold the trash can as he threw weeks’ worth of food she’d made, along with cookies, chips, and other stuff she’d bought from the pantry into the bag.  His cursing and insults continued this way for awhile.  Catherine didn’t remember exactly how long this lasted, just the blur of words floating, surfacing around her. 

“If I have a problem with drinking, you have one with eating,” her father said.  “I think the cliffs need some food to go with the wine.”

Catherine’s mother said nothing.  Nothing but her mother’s quiet, anonymous tears marked the response to her being jerked around the kitchen, called fat, disgusting, stupid, a complete waste.  Catherine knew it meant more to her.  She’d noticed her mother’s weight gain.  Though it was gradual, pounds added each year, the addage transformed her mother.  The angles of her face, her cheeks and chin, disappeared into a blur of softness.  Catherine noticed her mother also hugged her more gently, carefully making sure the weight remained hidden beneath the soft folds of flowing skirts and linen blouses.  Piles of her mother’s unopened diet books, stacks of low calorie dinners, bottles of appetite suppressants seemed to suggest her mother’s hopeless acknowledgment of something lost, outside her control.   

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