No Such Thing as Just One M&M

“One em-ah-em, only one,” my toddler begs, holding up two fingers and pointing to the cabinet where we hide the Costco-sized carton of M&Ms. Haimish is alarmingly precocious. He says things like “My name is Haimish, and this is my Mommy and my Mama. I like your outfit. Do you like my outfit?” to strangers, and has been able to count to twenty since he was just over a year old. But looking at his little empanada-shaped hand raising those two tiny fingers, I am reminded that memorizing a sequence of numbers is not the same as counting, and he is still only two.

I know if I give him only one M&M, he will press me for another, and when I say no, the fiery wrath of a miniature human with a feckless frontal lobe and absolutely nothing to lose will come raining down upon me.

Locking eyes with me, he repeats, “Only one, pwease.” I detect a threatening undertone.

Time stands still as I try to sort through the onslaught of contradicting thoughts ricocheting through my head. Sugar is poison and has no place in a small child’s diet let alone our own. Right, no M&M. Then again, the TikTok-ers who proselytize “non-coercive” parenting would advise me to question my need to control his food choices, and caution that children’s bodies can regulate on their own. Intuitive Eating, it’s called. Yea, okay, one M&M. Wait, what about alcohol and drugs? Would I expect his body to just self-regulate cocaine consumption? Isn’t my job to guide him and help him make healthy decisions? Definitely, no M&M. But how many of my friends had disordered eating, at least in part, because their mothers tried so hard to dictate their diets, projecting their own struggles with fatphobia onto their children? Eesh, okay, one M&M is fine. Ah, but what if this one M&M sends him down a self-destructive path, and suddenly he’s thirty years old, hopped up on sugar, wandering the streets after blowing every last penny at the candy store, begging strangers for just one more M&M, still holding up two fingers because he never learned to count?! Shit, ahh, no M&M!

“Mom-meeee.”

I register Haimish’s voice calling for me, but it’s faint and muffled like I’m underwater. Turns out my ping-ponging inner monologue was just the prelude to a tsunami of painful memories. I hold my breath as they rush in:

My childhood best friend and I are taking a bath together. She scans my naked body. “You’re fat!” I’m only eight, but I know this is the worst thing a girl can be. I angrily scribble in my journal, “I’m not fat! It’s the way kids are supposed to look!” (Clearly parroting my well-intentioned mother.) “I hope she grows up to be fat!” I add, alongside a sketch of a girl with a distended belly. (Clearly missing the point.)

I’m trying on jeans and lashing out at my mother when none of them fit over my hips. When I can’t get our dial-up internet to work, I know there’s something wrong with the wires or the cable company, but that logic stops there. When clothes don’t fit, my body is wrong, not the clothes. I skip dessert.

I’m at my annual physical. It’s the same thing every year. Height, weight, vitals—all fine. But I brace myself as my pediatrician whips out the growth chart, dragging his pointer finger to where my below-average height intersects with my above-average weight.

I’m at my annual physical. It’s the same thing every year. Height, weight, vitals—all fine. But I brace myself as my pediatrician whips out the growth chart, dragging his pointer finger to where my below-average height intersects with my above-average weight. He concludes that I am “borderline obese,” with no further elaboration, as if telling a child they’re overweight is the same as telling them they have strep throat: clearly bad and in need of remedy. He waves off my mother’s question as to whether being an athlete factors into the calculation, and prescribes less sugar and more exercise. Since I already do these things, I just carry on hating myself instead.

I’m a teenager. I’m twenty-one. I’m twenty-five. I courageously eat protein and vegetables all day, only to succumb to PacMan-like binges of whatever carbs and sugars I can dig up in the evenings. I’m a bad woman because I’m not thin. I’m a bad feminist because I care. I eat until the pain in my stomach matches the pain in my psyche. I am bad, so I feel bad.

I’m in my final year of law school. My kitten is slowly dying from a rare disease; I’ve been in a roller coaster relationship with a charming alcoholic for several months; and I had a panic attack during an exam. My appetite has plummeted. At my cousin’s wedding, my aunts and uncles gush, “You’ve lost weight, yea? You look wonderful!”

I’m thirty-two and six months pregnant with Haimish. My orgasm has started to disappear and my body is covered in a violently itchy rash. My doctor shrugs, “Those will likely improve after you give birth.” (They did not.) She is concerned about my rapid weight gain though. Any issues with my glucose test? No. Blood tests? No. The baby? No, everything looks great. So the issue is…? She pulls out a growth chart and my body reacts like it’s seen a ghost. I sob the whole way home and spend several days down a Reddit rabbit hole. The weight naturally molts from my body not two months postpartum.

“Mom-meeee,” I hear in the distance. Haimish needs me. And if I stay here, I’ll drown.

So I think of how I devoured Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth as a freshman in college, and learned how capitalism is a succubus that manufactures reasons for us to hate ourselves, and then relentlessly feeds off our insecurities and bank accounts. My rage propels me towards the surface. As I swim upwards, I think of my mother, who gave me the gift of having a caregiver who didn’t demonize her own body or go on walks to “earn her meals” during holidays. As my muscles tire, I think of my college rugby team—that not only celebrated but required a diversity of body types—chanting “THICK THIGHS SAVE LIVES!” as we marched into a bar still muddied and bruised from our game. And when I need that final burst of energy to break through the surface, I think of that first month of motherhood, when it felt like Haimish was sucking shards of glass from my nipples, and I sat sobbing on the toilet, bleeding and scabbed, doubting I’d survive; but I did, and it got better, and I lovingly breastfed him for over two years.

I take a deep swig of air.

I’m back in our kitchen and Haimish is tugging at my leg. I exhale. He looks up at me with his big brown eyes, “You okay, Mommy?”

We bring so much goddamn baggage into parenthood.

Just before I open my mouth, still unsure what to say, I remember what a psychic told me when Haimish was just a newborn. (Yes, a psychic. I know, I know. I was sleep-deprived and weepy and terribly desperate at the time.) She assured me that this was not my first rodeo with Haimish. We had been through several past lives and serious hardships together. But this lifetime was different, she said confidently. Here, our purpose was simply to experience joy. Maybe she tells this to everyone. I hope she does.

I crouch down to Haimish’s level and point out that he’s holding up two fingers. I ask if he’d like two M&Ms. “Oh! Yes!” he exclaims, radiating with delight. I open the cabinet and take the lid off the carton. He picks one blue and one green. Good choice, I think.