Free Training in Love by Manuela Pigna Page A

were little and
about their interpersonal relationship – but this is definitely not do-able. I have
no intention of asking my mother anything about anything regarding the subjects
of food, and my father... who sees him? He calls me on my birthday, which is
several months off. The most I can do is look at the  pictures and try to
remember. And ask Linda.
    When
the waitress arrives I order a cappuccino and a piece of apple tart. Linda, who
I found already seated at a table when I arrived, gives me a questioning look
and asks hesitantly, “But… the diet?”
    I
smile, because I feel like explaining it to Linda. “It’s part of the program. I
have to get rid of the sense of prohibiting certain foods.”
    Linda
nods and I add, “I wanted to talk to you just about this, among other things.
This book that Andrea gave me… I really love it. The one I told you about on
the phone.” She nods again and I continue, “One of the exercises is about
childhood, and I wanted to ask you, since we’ve known each other all our lives,
what you remember about how I was?”
    “When
you were little?” She asks me, “But ‘how you were’ in what sense?”
    “In
the sense of, do you remember how I was regarding food? Did I overeat? Did I
have strange habits? Stuff like that.”
    Linda
thinks about it for a minute, concentrating as she always does. It’s one of the
things about Linda that you remember, that she gives you her complete attention
and she always takes you seriously.
    In
the meantime the waitress arrives with our orders.
    “I…
don’t remember anything in particular, or strange,” says Linda once the
waitress has gone. She takes sip of her cappuccino and furrows her brow. “I
don’t remember anything…”
    “Was
I fat?”
    “When
we were children… no, you weren’t.” She is silent while she breaks off a piece
of croissant. “You weren’t a stick, no, but you weren’t excessive either… you
looked fine to me.”
    I
nod and pick up my cappuccino. “I didn’t think so either when I was looking at
the photos last night. But I still felt enormous and the kids at school teased
me.”
    “Hmm,
yes, but in elementary school…” Linda huffs raising an eyebrow. “Kids are
idiots sometimes and they make things up or latch on to everything. They teased
me about my nose, when I have a perfectly normal nose.”
    “Wow!”
I exclaim as though struck by lightning, “It’s true, I had completely forgotten
that they teased you about your nose!” I look at it as though I didn’t know it
perfectly well. “And then, it’s perfectly normal… Straight too…”
    She
rolls her eyes, “I told you. Teasing in elementary school doesn’t count and
from an objective point of view, you were fine. It began in junior high. There
I saw that something was changing, and then at the beginning of high school you
gained a lot. That I remember.” She pauses, wrinkling her brow, “But you know
something? I have never seen you overeat. You’ve always eaten in a normal way… Like
me.”
    Well,
sure. My screw-ups, my binges, my eating disasters have always been hidden, done
while I was alone.
    “Since
then you’ve stayed more or less the same. I’ve seen you lose something while
you were doing some diet, but then gain it back almost immediately afterwards.”
    I
nod, a little dispirited.
    “So.
Junior high. Does it tell you something?” Linda recaps, as usual entering into
the spirit of the thing.
    “No.
Frankly no,” I reflect. “Certainly my father’s abandoning us was a trauma, but
that happened before. Years before.”
    We
remain silent while thinking. In the meantime I begin to eat my cake, but
slowly. Another lesson from the book was to slow down, to give your stomach
time to get used to it.
    “Anyway,
it has to be that,” says Linda between one mouthful and another of her
croissant. I look up. She nods to herself. “Sure, what would you say it is?
Unless some other serious thing happened to you that I don’t