They said "You know you're looking good"
I threw back a querying glance. "In what way?"
And Jack said "Well you look good".
"Yeah, I heard that but I don't quite understand".
"Well you have to see you as I see you. I've been looking at you for the better part of ten months and I don't know how much you may have noticed you in the mirror, but I remember. I remember a tired looking, ring-eyed, furrow-browed and sad looking guy who hauled his ass in here every day. Every day I hoped I would see a smile, hoped to see some physical evidence of a mood lift. I was looking for a lift to those drooping shoulders, a straightening of the gait, a bit of a spring in the step, less of a shuffle. Some outward sign that things were changing. But you seemed to shrivel even more from the Fall to Winter.
I was thinking about what Jack had said and recalled that Roger had said something similar just last week. And Big John said at our agonizing sponsor meetings that he saw more of a spark in my eye, more eye contact and that even though our meetings were sometimes contentious, at least they had life in them, that I was not letting life roll me over, that I was standing up to it and facing it, challenging, it meeting it on its terms and dealing with it. And Roger's observation was that I looked fit, lost weight, looked healthy and rested and that I was dealing with the challenges that he and I had discussed and I was gradually solving the problems of employment and what I wanted to do with myself when I grow up, that we had been talking about for months.
And it was then that I understood what others had been observing that I only recently began to be consciously aware of myself. And this is quite astonishing to me, because this is the first time in forty years (that's a broad statement) that I can say this. I have been changing my self-image of myself. Sounds redundant. But I have actually been changing my image of my body image. For the first time in the past forty years (because the last time this occurred was when I was in college doing body building) I have looked at myself in the mirror and not been disgusted with the image that I saw. Rather than see a fat schlubby figure, I stand tall, such in the gut, actually acknowledge that the gut is less present than it has been for years, and throw my should back and try to look like a better image of me. And I haven't done that in forty years and certainly not during my marriage.
I have written before,(not here), that as a kid I had an awful body image, a fat, rolly kid, one which was at odds with pictures that I saw of myself when I later looked at myself when I was older. And I would look at those pictures wistfully when I "truly" was a rollier and pollier me looking back on a svelter me. But now I do recognize the new me; I know the me that Roger, Jack and Big John are referring to.
That person is someone I have gradually been getting used to and growing into this summer, first quite tentatively then enthusiastically. At first, I was afraid when my underwear felt too large, but it was a cheap enough investment to replace some with a smaller size. And when that worked to my delighted comfort, I decided to explore new avenues of personal hedonistic gratification. I swapped out some excessive large T shirts for more closely fitted ones that would have been embarrassingly revealing of an ample gut in years past but which now reveals just a nicely flattened belly. We are not talking Charles Atlas, (Arnold Schwarzenegger for those too young to know Charles), but just a better proportioned guy for 62 years old. Two years ago I thought that I was going to look like a fat version of Family Guy!
So when someone, especially someone in the program comes up to you and says he thinks you look good, you pay attention. Because you know that he is paying attention. These guys are not just giving out compliments. They are making observations. Jack could have said that he notice that I was glum and could he help and he may have actually done that. But he also noticed that I was looking well and by that observation he also helped, and he knew that.
We know that help is parceled out or distributed differently, sometimes as a friendly, how are you doin'? Or a " you sure are looking well rested" to "you look like you could use a hand or could speak to someone or ..." you name the need. That is what we do, and depending upon the effect, that is why we do it.
And this morning, I am grateful to Jack for letting me in on his casual and off the cuff observation. It may of been casual to him, but as you can see, it had a more than casual effect upon me.
