Big Beautiful Dreamer
ridiculously contented
~BBW, ~~WG, Issues. A social worker falls for a woman who has her own way of coping with her mom's pathologies.
It’s unusual for me to meet, in my line of work, a woman I would want to see again. I’m a Family Care Liaison, a fancy title that means I’m a go-between, a sort of mediator, for when the Department of Human Services and the local police or sheriff’s department end up having to consider removing children or adults from the home because of unsafe conditions.
How does one get such an unusual career, you might ask. Well, it’s simple enough: Take one bachelor’s degree in criminology and psychology, add graduation from the police academy and two years on the beat. Fold in one master’s of social work and another couple of years in the field. Overlay several years of volunteering with the local Guardian ad Litem program, and fold in one state grant that led someone at the DHS to say, “Hey! Jack used to be a cop – he’d be perfect for this!” And voila. One Family Care Liaison.
But you see, as I said, why I don’t meet all that many women who catch my fancy. Most of the time, the people I meet are in thrall to meth, or struggling with the pathologies of hoarding, or alcohol abuse, or … My heart breaks, and I want to see them in improved situations, but at the same time I have to keep an emotional distance.
Off the job, the hours are such a bomb on my social life that I seldom had a chance to meet anyone. There are as many three-in-the-morning calls as there are three-in-the-afternoon ones, and weekends are the busy season.
Then there was Lissa.
Lissa’s mother was a hoarder. That word encompasses a range of behaviors, and a range of reasons. Hoarding has been shown to be linked to attention deficit disorder – sometimes hoarders lack the organizational skills and focus to make decisions about an object’s fate, and feel panicky when faced with a requirement to decide. Some hoarders are “potentialists,” meaning they find it hard to discard objects because they see so many possible uses for them; others are “sentimentalists,” who have trouble discarding objects that were given to them by people dear to them.
Lissa’s mother, Erma, had issues with potentiality and also with a fear of being in want. Lissa had grown up in abject poverty, one of five children brought up by a minimally educated mother. Erma’s husband, a heavy drinker who was abusive, walked out when the youngest was three and the oldest ten. Lissa was six.
Erma's ex-husband had died of cirrhosis ten years ago. According to Lissa, that’s when a lifelong “pack-rat habit” had gradually become all-out hoarding. Erma’s house was piled to shoulder height everywhere except for snaking, narrow walking paths. Box lids and pieces of string. Used plastic bags and twist ties. Painstakingly flattened aluminum foil and stacks of newspapers. Thirty-year-old kindergarten finger paintings and brooms with broken handles.
And food.
It was the food that had turned this situation into one involving the authorities. A neighbor’s complaint about the odor and the rodent and insect infestations had brought in the sheriff’s department, which had brought in DHS, which had brought in me.
Now I stood, along with the DHS field worker and two sheriff’s deputies, fighting mightily to control my gag reflex. What was nominally the kitchen was piled with discarded cans, jars, bottles, and trays that had once held food. Clearly Erma prepared her own food from items bought at the grocery store, although there wasn’t an available surface or a clean implement in sight. The steel shelving that served as a pantry sagged with bulging cans, half-used boxes of dusty, sour-smelling pasta, fruits that were returning to compost. The refrigerator, once opened, revealed a blooming harvest of mold and sporous growths. Every item one of us dared to pick up showed an expiration date at least a year in the past, several dating back three years or more.
“Ma’am, if you eat this food, it will make you very sick,” one of the officers ventured. Erma made a cross-out motion with her arms, like an umpire calling the runner safe.
“It’s perfectly okay,” she insisted. “Those dates are just made-up. I can still use it.”
I made a small head-shaking motion to the officer and asked Lissa if the three of us could talk outside. We threaded our way out, down the front steps, and sat carefully in fraying webbed lawn chairs under a large tree in the patch of dirt that did for a front yard.
I talked gently and respectfully to Erma. I acknowledged the importance of her items, both the food and everything else. I invited her to consider the possibilities of what might happen if she got rid of the food. How were her finances? Her daughter was offering financial help if she found she needed it (she didn’t). We talked through her feelings of fear and anxiety that if she threw out the food she would starve.
The whole time, however, I was vividly aware of Lissa, sympathetic and patient, and drop-dead gorgeous.
Lissa, maybe twenty-five, had a full heart-shaped face, plump rosy cheeks, sparkling green eyes, temptingly pouty lips, and a chestnut bob. Creamy shoulders displayed in an off-the-shoulder gauzy top that floated over her plump milkmaid’s torso. Khaki capris that hugged her bounteous hips and displayed nicely rounded, lightly tanned calves. At a guess, two hundred and a few pounds tucked into five feet and three inches. My heart kept skipping a beat.
I took a deep breath and rearranged my hands in my lap. I turned the conversation to the rest of the house. At length, we returned, and I invited the officers and field worker to step out.
“Erma knows that she’ll be removed from her home if she doesn’t do something,” I said. “She thinks that her house is fine, and she doesn’t think it needs any attention, but she agrees that since ‘they’ are ordering her to make changes, she will work with us to get the place cleaned up.”
I got busy with my cell phone and the deputies authorized the cost of a cleanup crew. I got DHS to authorize the cost of a psychiatrist who would help Lissa and me walk Erma through the cleanup.
It took three days. At the end of it, Erma was red-eyed, but resigned. We’d removed all of the bad food and about two-thirds of the clutter, and what she was keeping was neatly organized. Erma had agreed that she was only allowed to stock up to the extent of the space in the containers, and Lissa would come by each Saturday, help her toss out expired food, and go to the supermarket with her as needed.
I stood under the tree, running my hand awkwardly up and down my neck.
“Um … your mom’s under DHS supervision now, she’s not really in my case load anymore,” I blurted. Oh, suave.
“Yeah…”
“So, um, I was wondering, would you like to go out with me sometime?”
“You want to go out with me?” Lissa asked, and there was a note of hesitancy in her voice that almost broke my heart. Clearly, she didn’t think of herself as beautiful, or even desirable.
“I … I think you’re beautiful,” I mumbled in the direction of my shoes.
Lissa bit her lip.
“Yeah … I’d like to go out,” she said slowly.
Over dinner, I heard more of Lissa’s story. Lissa’s siblings had found their own way of coping. Two were estranged. One lived across the country. One lived in town, as did Lissa, but worked long hours, willing to contribute financially but not emotionally. Lissa was the only one who could and did visit regularly and try to help her mother.
“Mom responded to how poor we were when I was growing up by saving everything,” she said. “I sort of did the same thing,” with a sad little chuckle, “only on the inside.”
She gestured to herself. “Whenever I’m around food, I eat until I can’t hold any more, like I’m afraid of where my next meal is coming from.” She dropped her gaze. “We were hungry a lot when I was growing up. We’d eat up every scrap of food when there was food, because there was no guarantee when the next time would be.”
She looked me in the eye, then, brave and a child at the same time. “So I’m a big girl. A lot of men don’t like that.”
“I like it,” I said. “Or … you know, I’ve never really thought about it as ‘liking big girls,’ I just think you’re gorgeous.” I blushed to the roots of my thinning fair hair.
Lissa smiled then, a genuine, big, enjoying-herself smile, and I smiled, and we were both laughing when the waiter showed up.
Lissa suggested an appetizer, and I wanted a different one, so we had both, and shared. Salads and entrees. We ate and talked and talked and ate, enjoying each other’s company, and then after dessert lingered over coffee, both laughingly admitting to being stuffed to the brim.
“I know I’m not in any danger of missing my next meal anymore,” Lissa admitted, “but honestly, I like being bigger. It feels good, it’s comfortable, I’m at ease in my own skin.”
Which she clearly was, but it was also clear to me that she’d had her share of being teased and bullied along the way.
I aimed to fix that, if I could, and if she would give me a chance.
(Continued in post 3 of this thread)
Buried Treasure
by Big Beautiful Dreamer
by Big Beautiful Dreamer
It’s unusual for me to meet, in my line of work, a woman I would want to see again. I’m a Family Care Liaison, a fancy title that means I’m a go-between, a sort of mediator, for when the Department of Human Services and the local police or sheriff’s department end up having to consider removing children or adults from the home because of unsafe conditions.
How does one get such an unusual career, you might ask. Well, it’s simple enough: Take one bachelor’s degree in criminology and psychology, add graduation from the police academy and two years on the beat. Fold in one master’s of social work and another couple of years in the field. Overlay several years of volunteering with the local Guardian ad Litem program, and fold in one state grant that led someone at the DHS to say, “Hey! Jack used to be a cop – he’d be perfect for this!” And voila. One Family Care Liaison.
But you see, as I said, why I don’t meet all that many women who catch my fancy. Most of the time, the people I meet are in thrall to meth, or struggling with the pathologies of hoarding, or alcohol abuse, or … My heart breaks, and I want to see them in improved situations, but at the same time I have to keep an emotional distance.
Off the job, the hours are such a bomb on my social life that I seldom had a chance to meet anyone. There are as many three-in-the-morning calls as there are three-in-the-afternoon ones, and weekends are the busy season.
Then there was Lissa.
Lissa’s mother was a hoarder. That word encompasses a range of behaviors, and a range of reasons. Hoarding has been shown to be linked to attention deficit disorder – sometimes hoarders lack the organizational skills and focus to make decisions about an object’s fate, and feel panicky when faced with a requirement to decide. Some hoarders are “potentialists,” meaning they find it hard to discard objects because they see so many possible uses for them; others are “sentimentalists,” who have trouble discarding objects that were given to them by people dear to them.
Lissa’s mother, Erma, had issues with potentiality and also with a fear of being in want. Lissa had grown up in abject poverty, one of five children brought up by a minimally educated mother. Erma’s husband, a heavy drinker who was abusive, walked out when the youngest was three and the oldest ten. Lissa was six.
Erma's ex-husband had died of cirrhosis ten years ago. According to Lissa, that’s when a lifelong “pack-rat habit” had gradually become all-out hoarding. Erma’s house was piled to shoulder height everywhere except for snaking, narrow walking paths. Box lids and pieces of string. Used plastic bags and twist ties. Painstakingly flattened aluminum foil and stacks of newspapers. Thirty-year-old kindergarten finger paintings and brooms with broken handles.
And food.
It was the food that had turned this situation into one involving the authorities. A neighbor’s complaint about the odor and the rodent and insect infestations had brought in the sheriff’s department, which had brought in DHS, which had brought in me.
Now I stood, along with the DHS field worker and two sheriff’s deputies, fighting mightily to control my gag reflex. What was nominally the kitchen was piled with discarded cans, jars, bottles, and trays that had once held food. Clearly Erma prepared her own food from items bought at the grocery store, although there wasn’t an available surface or a clean implement in sight. The steel shelving that served as a pantry sagged with bulging cans, half-used boxes of dusty, sour-smelling pasta, fruits that were returning to compost. The refrigerator, once opened, revealed a blooming harvest of mold and sporous growths. Every item one of us dared to pick up showed an expiration date at least a year in the past, several dating back three years or more.
“Ma’am, if you eat this food, it will make you very sick,” one of the officers ventured. Erma made a cross-out motion with her arms, like an umpire calling the runner safe.
“It’s perfectly okay,” she insisted. “Those dates are just made-up. I can still use it.”
I made a small head-shaking motion to the officer and asked Lissa if the three of us could talk outside. We threaded our way out, down the front steps, and sat carefully in fraying webbed lawn chairs under a large tree in the patch of dirt that did for a front yard.
I talked gently and respectfully to Erma. I acknowledged the importance of her items, both the food and everything else. I invited her to consider the possibilities of what might happen if she got rid of the food. How were her finances? Her daughter was offering financial help if she found she needed it (she didn’t). We talked through her feelings of fear and anxiety that if she threw out the food she would starve.
The whole time, however, I was vividly aware of Lissa, sympathetic and patient, and drop-dead gorgeous.
Lissa, maybe twenty-five, had a full heart-shaped face, plump rosy cheeks, sparkling green eyes, temptingly pouty lips, and a chestnut bob. Creamy shoulders displayed in an off-the-shoulder gauzy top that floated over her plump milkmaid’s torso. Khaki capris that hugged her bounteous hips and displayed nicely rounded, lightly tanned calves. At a guess, two hundred and a few pounds tucked into five feet and three inches. My heart kept skipping a beat.
I took a deep breath and rearranged my hands in my lap. I turned the conversation to the rest of the house. At length, we returned, and I invited the officers and field worker to step out.
“Erma knows that she’ll be removed from her home if she doesn’t do something,” I said. “She thinks that her house is fine, and she doesn’t think it needs any attention, but she agrees that since ‘they’ are ordering her to make changes, she will work with us to get the place cleaned up.”
I got busy with my cell phone and the deputies authorized the cost of a cleanup crew. I got DHS to authorize the cost of a psychiatrist who would help Lissa and me walk Erma through the cleanup.
It took three days. At the end of it, Erma was red-eyed, but resigned. We’d removed all of the bad food and about two-thirds of the clutter, and what she was keeping was neatly organized. Erma had agreed that she was only allowed to stock up to the extent of the space in the containers, and Lissa would come by each Saturday, help her toss out expired food, and go to the supermarket with her as needed.
I stood under the tree, running my hand awkwardly up and down my neck.
“Um … your mom’s under DHS supervision now, she’s not really in my case load anymore,” I blurted. Oh, suave.
“Yeah…”
“So, um, I was wondering, would you like to go out with me sometime?”
“You want to go out with me?” Lissa asked, and there was a note of hesitancy in her voice that almost broke my heart. Clearly, she didn’t think of herself as beautiful, or even desirable.
“I … I think you’re beautiful,” I mumbled in the direction of my shoes.
Lissa bit her lip.
“Yeah … I’d like to go out,” she said slowly.
Over dinner, I heard more of Lissa’s story. Lissa’s siblings had found their own way of coping. Two were estranged. One lived across the country. One lived in town, as did Lissa, but worked long hours, willing to contribute financially but not emotionally. Lissa was the only one who could and did visit regularly and try to help her mother.
“Mom responded to how poor we were when I was growing up by saving everything,” she said. “I sort of did the same thing,” with a sad little chuckle, “only on the inside.”
She gestured to herself. “Whenever I’m around food, I eat until I can’t hold any more, like I’m afraid of where my next meal is coming from.” She dropped her gaze. “We were hungry a lot when I was growing up. We’d eat up every scrap of food when there was food, because there was no guarantee when the next time would be.”
She looked me in the eye, then, brave and a child at the same time. “So I’m a big girl. A lot of men don’t like that.”
“I like it,” I said. “Or … you know, I’ve never really thought about it as ‘liking big girls,’ I just think you’re gorgeous.” I blushed to the roots of my thinning fair hair.
Lissa smiled then, a genuine, big, enjoying-herself smile, and I smiled, and we were both laughing when the waiter showed up.
Lissa suggested an appetizer, and I wanted a different one, so we had both, and shared. Salads and entrees. We ate and talked and talked and ate, enjoying each other’s company, and then after dessert lingered over coffee, both laughingly admitting to being stuffed to the brim.
“I know I’m not in any danger of missing my next meal anymore,” Lissa admitted, “but honestly, I like being bigger. It feels good, it’s comfortable, I’m at ease in my own skin.”
Which she clearly was, but it was also clear to me that she’d had her share of being teased and bullied along the way.
I aimed to fix that, if I could, and if she would give me a chance.
(Continued in post 3 of this thread)
