The Goodbye Cookie; A Memoir About Never Giving Up

By Marcia Meislin

As a young girl, Marcia Meislin craved much more than food. But as her weight escalated, she kept feeding this hunger with cookies and snacks.

The heavier she became (eventually 300 pounds), the more she felt like an outsider—and the more she ate. Even her success as a sought-after public speaker couldn’t feed her deep emotional hunger. Despite multiple diets, therapies, and two weight-loss surgeries, Marcia’s life didn’t change until her focus shifted from the number on the scale to the cravings at her core.

This tearful and triumphant memoir chronicles Marcia Meislin’s liberation from the hell of food addiction and obesity and lights the way to a life of self-acceptance, fulfillment, and joy.

It is a recipe for hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marcia Meislin
• Release date: Apr 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9780989236546

Book preview

PART I

BORN TO BE FAT?

Essentially, for those who’ve never had them (and I can’t believe such people exist), there are three layers of spongy cake: red, yellow, and green. Sandwiched between the layers is raspberry jam and then the whole thing is coated in chocolate. They’re so good, if you dropped dead after finishing one you wouldn’t mind so much. It’d be a good way to go.

–Adam Roberts re: Rainbow Cookies

in The Amateur Gourmet April 23, 2010

CHAPTER ONE

THE HELLO COOKIE

I hear the other kids laughing and riding their bikes but my job, my favorite thing to do every Sunday, is to sit on the stoop and wait. I don’t care if it’s hot. I am wild with anticipation: Uncle Harry is coming.

Every time I hear a car, I jump up. Our own DeSoto sits parked to the side of the driveway to make room for the blue Chevy convertible with the top down. Debbie Gordon comes over and asks me: Want to play ball? I shake my head no. Wendy Hanson waves me over to join three other girls playing hopscotch. I just smile, and she knows. She knows because every Sunday it’s the same thing. I’m too excited to leave my post; what if Uncle Harry comes and I’m not there?

I hear Paul Anka crooning, Put Your Head on My Shoulder, and I know right away. It’s him. Uncle Harry drives up close, as close as he can, so he can race out of the car, grab me, and twirl me around higher and higher—as high as a bird. When I’m seven feet tall, I giggle and shriek as I reach my hand down and rub Uncle Harry’s bald spot. But even that high up, I’m not scared—I know Mom’s oldest brother would never let anything bad happen to me. Uncle Harry is handsome and tall, with pearly-white teeth. And then, with the biggest smile in the world, he says those words, the ones I’ve been waiting for all week: I have a surprise for you.

He hands me the rainbow cookies—red, green, yellow. The most delicious rainbow cookies, all the way from Brooklyn to our little town of Ardsley! They were cut just for me—bite-size so I can pop them into my mouth whole. Nothing ever, ever tastes as good as Uncle Harry’s rainbow cookies.

And then, as he does every Sunday, he asks me to marry him. I say, Yes, even though of course I know he’s really married to Aunt Anne. He pulls out our special wedding ring, and slips it onto my finger, a chocolate-covered raspberry jelly ring. He gives me a big kiss, the kind of kiss only Uncle Harry can give.

We play for hours. We play ball, bikes, dolls, Candy Land, but mostly we just are together. Laughing, eating, talking—I never get off his lap. Every Sunday and every holiday.

Then one Sunday, Uncle Harry doesn’t come because he has a bad cough. His cough gets worse and worse and he misses more and more of our Sundays until finally, he doesn’t visit at all. Mom takes me to see him in the hospital. In the green room, Uncle Harry has a high, small bed. A bunch of machines and tubes are tied to him. When I walk in, Uncle Harry smiles that huge Uncle Harry smile, but he doesn’t race out of bed to grab me and twirl me. He calls me ketze, short for ketzele, the way he always has, so I know I’m his little kitten and he loves me, but I don’t really know what to do. He just lies there. I want to be close to him, but I don’t know how. Where is his lap? How do I find his lap?

Later, in my dreams, I climb up and lie down next to him in his bed, but I don’t think I really did that. I couldn’t figure out how to get up there into that high bed with so many wires and tubes.

In August 1959, when I was four and a half, Uncle Harry died. I heard Mom whisper to her friends that Uncle Harry died of lung cancer. My brothers and sister were at sleep-away camp, and my parents waited until the end of summer when they came home to tell them. My brothers and sister were mad that so much time had gone by before they heard the news. They loved Uncle Harry (almost) as much as I did.

Sundays were never the same after that. Even rainbow cookies were never the same. From that time on, I developed an addiction to rainbow cookies and spent my life in pursuit of that one cookie that would produce the high I felt while high up in Uncle Harry’s arms. Had I known then what I know now, that Uncle Harry’s nicotine addiction killed him, just as my sugar addiction would nearly kill me, I might have been able to separate out Uncle Harry’s love from Uncle Harry’s sugary treats. But that would take a lifetime to learn, or at least half a century.

In the meantime, I sampled a lot of rainbow cookies throughout my life, but none of them ever tasted as good or looked as pretty as the ones Uncle Harry used to bring me all the way from Brooklyn.

CHAPTER TWO

MEET THE MEISLINS

Based on a photograph of me at three years old with pudgy cheeks and a double chin, I would say that overeating has been with me for a very long time. I’m not sure I was even old enough in that picture to reach the refrigerator, so I can’t take total responsibility for managing (or not managing) my own food intake and sweet tooth back then. At an early age, those fat cells were making themselves very comfortable in my body and they had no plans—no plans—to shrink for many years to come.

As an only child, Dad hungered for a large family. After five kids, he was ecstatic and looked forward to more. Tired but still feisty, Mom turned to Dad and said, "If you want more children, you have them."

First, there were two miscarriages; then Jay was born, distinctive as the first-born son in a traditional Jewish home. After two and a half years, Allan arrived. Mom hoped for a girl as her third and when two years later Arleen was born, she sported a bow in every picture. Right on schedule, after twenty-five months, Mom gave birth to Bobby. The rhythm was altered when there was another miscarriage two years later. There was a five-year gap between babies before I appeared. When I was born—in typical democratic Meislin fashion—the family took a vote whether my name should be Marcia Carol or Carol Marcia. Bobby was the only one who wanted Carol Marcia and to this day, I wish he had won.

Our house was bustling with five kids, an ill grandfather, his lively caretaker, a weekend uncle, a hyper dog, and a multitude of friends and relatives who dropped in for Mom’s cooking or her sage advice. It was fine with Mom to be the hostess of our own Grand Central Station, as she used to call the kitchen. Our fridge was always packed and the spare freezer in the basement was chock full of Millie’s homemade vegetarian concoctions.

Vegetarian? You may wonder. How can you be a fat vegetarian? In a house that was a veritable temple of vegetarians.

Here is the history: the Meislins were vegetarian long before most Americans knew what that meant. When my father was 13 years old, still in Russia, his father took him to the local slaughterhouse to pick out meat for the Sabbath. Dad abhorred what he saw and declared that he didn’t believe in killing animals for food. All his life, Dad remained a steadfast vegetarian, and the day of their wedding, Mom converted. They raised all five kids as vegetarians and to this day, we have never eaten meat, fish, or chicken.

Eating was a ritual. The dinette table was 8 feet long; pink wrought iron with a glass top. Later the whole set was spray-painted black. On Friday night for Shabbos and again on holidays, the glass was always covered with a pure white, embossed linen tablecloth; on weekdays, a washable plastic paisley print. Invariably someone would set something down on the table with a heavy hand and we all learned to chime in, Be careful, it’s glass!

At the head of the long table was Dad, seated under a painting that one of his psychiatric patients made for him. The painting showed a deep winter snow scene with a splash of red for a rustic cabin. For years, Dad was a psychiatrist and Chief of Staff at the VA Hospital in Montrose, NY. Dad loved his patients and his work, but family always came first. He used to say, I didn’t go into private practice because I didn’t want work getting in the way of family. Working at the VA, though long hours, meant he could spend Shabbos with the family, except when he was in the Reserves. As a Lieutenant-Colonel, Dad served weeks at a time at Camp Drum in upstate New York. When Dad was away, and even after he died, no one ever sat in Dad’s chair.

To Dad’s right at the table was Arleen Bernice, named after our great-grandmother, Aydla Bracha. Arleen’s name meant refined blessing in Yiddish and even her middle name, Bernice, had the word nice in it. The name really fit; Arleen was and still is sweet and gentle. She played piano for hours and with her very tuned ear, she was a source of comfort and blessing to my parents, who loved to listen to her sonatas and fugues. Arleen took after Dad: introverted, quiet, a great listener, someone who managed to calm others and keep them centered. Even in her 60s, that continues to be the role Arleen plays in the family: grounded, beloved, with a huge heart and a small ego.

In contrast to my older sister, the blessing, my Yiddish name was Chaya, the animal, often nicknamed Vilda Chaya, wild animal. While Arleen, with her subdued nature, calmed people down, I riled them up. Restless and passionate, the only thing better than a little drama was a big one. I asked provocative questions, argued my points, and earned the title from my mother of women’s libber when I refused to do dishes unless the boys did them, too. My parents used to joke that I’d be the first woman president, but I was more interested in becoming an actress. Little did I know I’d end up a public speaker teaching leaders how to find their voice at the table.

To my right was Jay, with his signature 18-ounce yellow-bubbled tumbler filled with iced coffee at lunch and root beer at dinner. When Jay drank too quickly, he erupted into a coughing spasm and his face turned red. He and I had that in common: I coughed because of asthma; Jay coughed because of cerebral palsy. While everyone at the table had suggestions on how to suppress Jay’s coughing, I was the only one who knew to leave Jay alone and let him cough.

According to Mom, on November 10, 1942, one day before what was then Armistice Day, she was in protracted labor with Jay, and the doctor was impatient to leave on vacation for the holiday. He pulled out Jay with forceps, resulting in cerebral palsy and legal blindness from birth. From the time he was an infant, Mom established an exercise regimen for Jay that was her own version of physical, occupational, and speech therapy. She worked with him to develop muscle tone, dexterity, swallowing skills, social etiquette, and a positive sense of pride in himself.

In the 1940s, Jay’s unique condition defied conventional labels of physically handicapped or mentally retarded, and Mom and Dad struggled to find a program that would meet his intellectual level while catering to his special needs. At Spring Valley Junior High School, Jay found a supportive and encouraging teacher and other companions who understood him and related to him with humor and ease. Upon completion, Jay landed a job as part-time janitor at the East Ramapo school district, where he is now entering his 48th year of employment.

Next to Jay, at the kitchen side of the table, sat Mom, the balabusta, a woman who manages home and family with aplomb. Rarely in her seat, she was always organizing the next course, transferring food from pot to table, cleaning, doling out seconds, thirds, and giving each person an exclusive just for you favorite food. Tireless, Mom gathered us all to the table, served elaborate, gourmet meals, and prepared ritual foods for every holiday. Dad, Bob, and Jay liked their vegetarian chopped liver with nuts but Arleen preferred hers without, which meant two versions of vegetarian chopped liver. My salad had no tomatoes; Dad’s teemed with vine-ripe Jerseys. Half of us ate noodle kugel with cheese and the other half with raisins and nuts. We were served in birth order: first Dad, then Jay, Allan, Arleen, Bobby, then me, and at last, Mom served herself. I salivated as the parade of plates passed in front of my nose, waiting for Mom to sit down so we could start.

After dinner, after dessert, after the cleanup, Mom would disappear and search for her own stash of chocolate, and I imagine she savored every melt-in-your-mouth morsel, alone.

On Mom’s right sat Allan, 10 years my senior. Everything Allan did looked glamorous; he was my first greaser, beatnik, hippie, Soho artist, and the first to own a home in Woodstock. Allan lived the fast life: girls, cars, and motorcycles. Even today, as he nears 70, Allan still drives his Austin-Healey, his Coot—an amphibious four-wheel-drive ATV road warrior—and 14 motorcycles. Allan’s drama was never at the dinner table; it was on the road or in the air. Years later, Allan directed and produced corporate training and product videos. For thrills, he shot NASCAR races from inside the car, hot air balloons from the air, and motorcycle rallies from his own bike.

On Allan’s right, without a seat between them, was Bobby. Sitting next to Dad, both at the table and temple, gave Bobby an advantage that none of us had. It’s no surprise that Bob followed most in Dad’s footsteps and became a psychotherapist. On Saturday mornings, Dad and Bobby walked the four blocks to pray at shul together, wrapped themselves in their white-and-black prayer shawls, taleisim, and sat together on the old wooden bench. The shul was a small, converted Cape Cod house, but Dad and Bobby had prime seats, right next to the raised bima where the rabbi stood, and they caught all the inside jokes.

Speaking of jokes, Bobby was the prince of puns and he made me laugh so hard, I would start wheezing. Our repartee would begin with an innocent remark:

Anyone: The bread is really good.

Bobby: Yeah, must have cost a lot of dough.

Marcia: You don’t really knead all that.

Bobby: Rye not?

Pause.

Marcia: You’re on a roll…

Maybe Mom, maybe even Dad: You butter stop while you’re ahead.

All (laughing): Ohhh…

But it’s still Bobby’s turn and he’s thinking.

Bobby: That line was really cheesy.

Marcia: You’re spreading it on thick now!

Bobby: That was a pat answer.

Silence… then groans as people start to get it.

Sometimes he’ll help them.

Bobby: Pat of butter? Get it? Pat answer.

Everyone else laughs and moves on with their lives but Bobby and I are in it for the long haul. Hours later, he would pop into my room with a comeback and I’d have to drop what I was doing and think of a one-up. Nowadays, we Skype or text, always in search of fresh material to toss, Tag, you’re it!

When Uncle Jack visited, there were eight of us around the crowded table but the rest of the time it was seven of us eating, laughing, arguing, eating more, making our points, trying to get heard, eating some more. In my case, I also sneaked in food as I would get up to transfer leftovers or dish something out and grab an extra piece of burnt crust from the corner of the pan. Or I’d grab a serving spoon and lick it clean, having then to wash it again so Mom could use it. I officially had one slice of bread at the table, but then stole an extra slice as I was putting the leftovers back into the bakery bag.

Did we pack on pounds? Yes. Other than Allan, we were all big eaters. And our vegetarianism included so much starch and even fat, it was not surprising that we became, for the most part, a heavy vegetarian family. We typically ate more than one portion of the main course along with bread, appetizers, salad, and dessert. Beginning with Dad, we all battled our weight. Photographs of Dad as a boy show he was of average build. In his early 20s, the black-and-white scalloped photos from Europe and Africa portray Dad with dark hair and an average weight and physique, but by his early 30s, Dad’s thick hair turned a distinguished white and his entire body had thickened also—thickset shoulders, chest, and a wider waist. Gray and heavy, Dad appeared older than his years.

Photographs of Dad’s parents and grandparents present a solid portrait of a very stout family. In a photo from 1923, before the family left for America, Dad’s grandmother looks obese. In those days, weight was a sign of prosperity; Dad’s family was upper middle class, they owned a lumber mill in town. Clearly none of the original Russian Meislins lacked in sustenance or substance.

As we all did, Dad would eat a substantial dinner. Several hours later, after reading or watching TV in bed, he would descend for his midnight snack, usually around 9 or 10 at night. He would visit his consecrated diet cabinet in a remote corner of the kitchen filled with Metrecal, Special K, or any new lo-cal food that appeared on the market. Dad would create a medley of Metrecal pudding, cereal, raisins. When he felt like a splurge, he mixed in ice milk, Mom’s approved ice cream substitute. Several times a week, Dad worked off his calories by swimming laps with his own version of the doggy paddle at Jack LaLanne.

During the ten days between the high holidays—Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—Dad cleaned out his system with a fruit and juice fast. He began this practice in 1936, when he was a 29-year-old medical student in Lausanne, Switzerland. As the U.S. had a quota for Jews attending medical school, Dad went abroad to complete his medical training. His thesis in French was a study of patients who went on juice fasts to detox. The young doctor monitored their vital signs and weight and became convinced that this practice was healthy—not only physically, but also emotionally. For 11 months out of the year, Dad ate large hearty meals, worked out, keeping stress levels down, and then for the entire Jewish month of Elul, he cleansed his system with this stringent protocol between the Days of Awe.

Mom’s diet varied. If she were watching, (meaning attending and getting weighed at her weekly diet watchers program), she would eat fewer carbs and more salad, with her low-calorie dressing of saccharin instead of sugar. In later years, she put saccharin in the salad dressing for everyone, not just the dieters. But Mom couldn’t resist her seeded Jewish corn bread along with the fresh braided challahs she picked up at Pakula’s bakery on Friday afternoons.

Mom came from a large family, in every sense. Pictures of her mother show a substantial woman with an ample torso. Mom was the youngest of six and her oldest sister, my favorite Aunt Bea, was the heaviest, standing 4’10" and weighing well over 200 pounds. Sisters Millie (Mom), Bea, and Elsie, loved to dunk mandelbread, the Jewish version of biscotti, or rugelach into their strong coffee, giggle uncontrollably, and argue about everything, but mostly about the relatives. The more they talked, the more they dunked. These were sisters who loved to eat, talk, and laugh.

The men in her family, although they liked their food, didn’t seem to have chronic weight or food issues, perhaps because they smoked more than they chewed. They were heavy smokers, with heavy results starting with Mom’s father, who died when she was 16. Uncles Harry and Joe had lungs removed because of lung cancer and emphysema, and Uncle Sam, who at 99 was only an occasional pipe smoker, outlived them all. Mom had been a chain smoker but she gave that up after losing her closest brother, Harry. She was 42 when she quit and yet she, too, died of lung cancer at 73. One wonders whether bad pulmonary karma followed my family or was it addiction to nicotine and food?

When Mom stopped smoking, she ballooned up four sizes. Throughout life, food demons haunted her—though she won a huge triumph at age 18 by losing 30 pounds, dating two suitors, Jack and Mac, and securing a new life in which she became desirable to men. I heard this story over and over, like a mantra: Lose weight and you will get a good man (maybe two), Lose weight and your whole outlook on life will change, Lose weight and you will love yourself. Unfortunately, it was the negative messages that I heard louder: Fat girls don’t get boyfriends. You can’t like yourself if you’re fat. You’ll never be happy unless you’re thin.

Despite Mom’s generous and bubbly personality, happy marriage, loving family and friends, beautiful home, and comfortable lifestyle, Mom judged herself day-to-day on whether she was a good girl or bad girl, depending on what she ate. I would watch her pack her suitcases with cruise wear to safari wear. When she was a size 12, she was ebullient. At size 18, her self-disgust ballooned in proportion.

Uch, I hate myself! she would say, tsking at her profile in the mirror. She would turn this way and that, giving herself the evil eye and declaring, I’m starting Monday. Then Monday she would put herself on a strict diet and the rest of us would have to suffer, too. Mom insisted I join her on every diet in the book (and there were shelves and shelves of such books): Dr. Stillman’s diet, Dr. Atkins’ diet, the Scarsdale Diet Doctor, the grapefruit diet, Diet Watchers, Weight Watchers calories, Weight Watchers points, Weight Watchers Quick Start, and Mom’s own portion modification diet. I usually quit any diet after the first few days. For Mom, sometimes her diets lasted and she lost weight; other times, she was off the diet and munching by Wednesday.

While Jay outgrew his baby fat, and Bobby managed his weight through sports, Mom’s greatest disappointment was having two daughters who were fat. She so much wanted to shield us from the pain of yo-yo dieting, hating our bodies, or having trouble finding nice clothes and boyfriends. But Mom didn’t have a clue how to stop the vicious cycle that began way before her and may be some part of a genetic disposition for a long time to come.

I remember when I was pregnant, and I found out my children were boys, I was so relieved. While many of my friends wanted girls, I was terrified that I would really mess up a girl: do to her what my mother did to me. If my daughter were thin, I would be in a constant state of panic that she’d become fat. If she were fat, I’d want her to be thin, but not in the judgmental and critical way Mom was with me. I would do my best to be positive, to let her know that I loved her as she was, that I didn’t need for her to lose weight for my approval, while privately I would have been heartbroken. I’d be so scared that an overweight daughter would be doomed to repeat my mistakes that I would stare at her, watch her every bite, and eye her in the department store mirror. I might have said the right words but underneath I’d be killing myself, trying to think up yet another strategy to get her to do what I needed her to do—lose weight and be normal.

Mom tried all those tactics: love, fear, bribes, begging, withholding, anything and everything she could think of, only I didn’t lose weight until much later…well, that story is the meat of this vegetarian’s book. My boys had their phases of weight gain but I wasn’t as rattled. Don’t get me wrong—it bothered me and sent me into a dizzying spin of forward projections: they would be fat or outcasts, they’ll have a poor body image, they won’t get the right girls, they’ll get picked last for teams. None of that happened and none of that obsessive fear took on the proportion of my own childhood when my mother looked at her own little girls and we broke her heart.

For years, Arleen and I rationalized that if Mom didn’t nag us so much about being heavy, we’d have stopped eating and lost weight. Nevertheless, long after Mom died, we remained carbohydrate junkies: obese, with co-morbidities. The blame it on Mom card ran out; long after she was dead, we were still bingeing. Not that either of us ever stopped thinking about how to get thin, how to stay thin. I remember Arleen telling me one day that if you stopped her