I get that I’m not a tall woman, but I don’t think of myself as short. “My legs reach all the way to the ground,” I can be heard saying. I have accepted my height, that many women are taller than me, and that I seem to have sufficient height to do anything I need to do. I can reach into many of the cabinets in my kitchen, and all of them if I simply stand on something or climb onto the counter. I have married a man taller than I am, who I sometimes ask to change light bulbs, grab high items, and do any manner of task that I could do, but instead I offer it up to him so he can fulfill his provide/protect urges and contribute to my overall wellness, which contributes to his overall wellness. I am, as the politically correct times would say, my “just right height.”
I am five foot, three and three quarter inches tall. I know this because I’ve been saying it for decades, but I confess I don’t know if it’s really true. I have no memory of the event or time when my height was measured and declared. I might have been 5’ 3½” and rounding up for effect all these years. Besides, who, really, is now going to come around with measuring tape to determine if I have that last ¼ inch? When my hair is styled, and the curls just right, I’m sure I’m a perfect 5’4”. Maybe even taller. Add my going-out heels, and I’m a respectable height for a girl. Maybe I really am 5’4” and have just been slouching. If I had paid more attention to my mother and stood up straight, as she begged/ nagged/pleaded with me to do up until I was well into my 30s, I might have full claim to a taller stature. But I was not the kind of girl to take in parental wisdom, or comply with a demand uttered dozens of times a day. This, my friends, is where adolescent obstinacy leads: midlife frantic efforts to elongate and stretch and straighten tightened and misused musculature and skeletal structures in a vain effort to ward off a shoulder stoop or overall body sag.
If anything, I’m apt to get shorter with time, let’s all hear it for the personal charms of gravity, the squishing of the gel-like disks in my back with the burden of hauling my petite 5-foot-plus body upright for all the years I hope to be on this earth, the impending arthritis and whatever other orthopedic changes await that will make me a short old lady. Even if I lose the entire two inches predicted for women as they age, I’ll be over 5 feet, a diminutive victory but I’ll take it.
My son has begun middle school. Up until now, I have spent the better part of the last decade looking down to speak to him, bending down on one knee to have eye-to-eye conversations, being able to kiss the top of his head when he holds me tight in a hug. I’ve looked down to communicate with all his friends, always able to see over the gaggle of kids in a crowd, having the advantage not just of parental age and title, but of height. I was bigger than these kids, so my dictates were taken seriously.
Halfway through last year, something began to change. Many 5th grade boys (and girls) began to grow, getting closer and closer to my shoulders, then my chin, then my eyes, then the top of my head. I’ve known these kids for years, so they felt safe and comfortable comparing their new heights to me, standing back to back and using a hand to level off the place where our heads met. Usually I still won. But not all the time. By the end of the school year, some of the boys were taller than me. But in the land of elementary school, where the majority of kids were really, really small – thank you, Universe, for your annual contribution of new, fresh-faced kindergartener little humans to keep the average size of children far below mine – I was, by comparison, clearly adult and grown up and, of course, tall enough.
Fast forward to middle school. No more miniature people so cute they make your teeth hurt, darling tiny outfits, oversized backpacks that seem to drag on the floor, dwarfing the stalwart student marching down the hallway, little bodies that ought to hold little voices but, of course, surprise any and all grown ups when the wail is turned up to 10.
My son has not yet “popped” – the word I use for him reaching his adult height. He weighs in the mere 70’s, wears a size 8 or 10 (despite being 11), and can finally stand tall enough to reach my chest. Perhaps the middle school growth spurt, moving boys’ heads far away from their mothers’ chests, is the real reason males spend the next 50 years trying to get close to any other set of breasts. A homing reaction to re-create the safety of a hug with boobs. Anyway, my kid still gets the boob-high hug, and he’s a pretty happy kid, so I offer up my N of 1 research and will let others take it from there.
Some of my son’s new peers are already nearing their adult height; some of the 8th graders have possibly completed their growth trajectory, and are as tall as the faculty and staff. When I talk to the students now, I am looking up, into faces with pimples and mouths with braces, in order to speak to polite, well-mannered middle school boys. The boys are looking down, smiling kindly to the small, Lilliputian library-helper, the mother you no longer need to look in the eye who toddles into the school library to donate her time. Their conversations with me are getting briefer. The world that holds their interest is the one at their eye level, not mine; they speak to me if they have to, no longer because I intrinsically am someone they want to speak to. You can almost see the subtitles under their words, “Oh, be nice. This is someone’s mother. Nice that old people like her still want to help out. Smile. They like it when you smile.”
The world around me has grown taller. My son is aware that he’s one of the short kids in his class, but we’ve had tons of biology talks to let him know that he’s likely to end up somewhere near his dad’s height, not mine, and to try to remain patient. Turns out he’s more patient than I am. I used to be tall. I used to rule the playground and play-date roost, having my “big voice” available to back any parental injunction if I needed it. The kids looked up to me. Even though I haven’t yet lost a millimeter of my own height, it seems I’ve begun to shrink.