I GUESS THEY WERE LISTENING AFTER ALL

My poor kids are inheriting shitty genes from both sides of the family. There's my dad's arthritis, diabetes and weird blood disease; my mom's diabetes, bursitis, diverticulitis and congestive heart failure; FIL's severe hypertension; and MIL's cardiovascular disease. On top of all that, just about everyone on both sides has weight problems. Of course, a lot of the former may have been caused, or exacerbated, by the latter. My brother and John's father were the only slim ones in the lot, but unfortunately, they both smoked, so my brother had a heart attack while still in his 40s, and FIL had a series of strokes that left him severely brain damaged.

You can see then, why I am so excited to see my kids getting proactive about their health. My daughter was almost too thin growing up, but was never into sports or exercise at all, so she had a hard, hard time finding ways to fight her slowing metabolism. Luckily, she discovered belly dancing (Tribal, not Cabaret Style, as she recently explained to me) - the first exercise she ever didn't hate! She also joined Weight Watchers not long ago, to help her get a firmer grip on nutrition and portion control.

My son, bless his heart, takes after me and my side of the family. He was way more active than his sister, but even when he was in the marching band, lugging a tuba around in the heat most of the summer and for several hours after school each day, plus working as a sacker at the grocery store, he was never what you would call slim. Now that he must spend his days sitting at a computer, he is really having to fight it. You can imagine then, how thrilled I was when he took it upon himself to start working out with a trainer again, and showed up here this weekend, lugging his new cookbooks, and totally pumped up about "eating clean."

It really does a mother's heart good, to feel like her kids are on the right track - when they seem to be getting their lives under control, and using the tools she tried to pass on to them, to handle whatever comes their way. It makes it so much easier to begin backing away, and easing her grip on the reins - to pull out those scissors, and start snip, snip, snipping at those apron strings.

P.S. Many thanks to zehara.co.uk for the above image of tribal belly dancers.