We trudge up our front steps in the early evening, returning from dinner with friends. We ate turkey, stuffing, beans and brussels sprouts, gravy, mashed potatoes. Our contribution was a salted caramel apple pie and vanilla ice-cream for dessert. We all ate too much. “I’m putting on my fat pants,” says my husband as he enters the code on the front door. At that moment, I turn on the steps to see a man pushing his daughter in a stroller across the street. The autumn light is waning. I catch the eye of this young father. It’s clear to me that he had heard what Michael said about fat pants. We share a smile. 

That moment of human connection and common understanding made me happy all evening. What was it? It was knowing the feeling of eating too much and needing to get out of the jeans and zippered clothing, to put on the good old pjs with the forgiving drawstring. That young dad had a pair of fat pants too, I bet, a grungy pair of UVic sweats he pulls on when he’s eaten too many of his wife’s homemade cookies. 

These days I wear fat pants most of the time. There has been a softening, not only of the gut, but of the days themselves. The hard beep of the alarm in the morning is gone, replaced by a warm hand touching my back, caressing my flank. The morning routine is unrushed. I push up the shade to see dawn clouds flushed in pink. The coffee tastes good. 

I spend as long as possible in my pajamas, then switch to leggings with an elastic waist to take the dog for a walk. I step on the scale every once in a while, and my weight remains the same, hovering around 55 kilograms. But the body expands, loosens, just as time loosens around the edges. The weekends are no longer demarcated. The fence separating Saturday and Sunday from the rest of the week crumbles to reveal the long week as a flat green field. But as you traverse the field, day by day, hillocks rise up before you, unexpected, beautiful. A sudden offer, an old friend reaching out. Time to read a book in the middle of the day. The best morning glory muffin you’ve ever tasted. 

Sometimes you panic because the borders have disappeared. Terrifying, all that unmarked space. So, you write to-do lists and make a lot of coffee dates and sign up for classes and try to get part-time work. Then you wake one morning, see the light leaking through the crack between blood-red curtains, hear the bird singing. You realize you’ve gone from writing in the first person to writing you, in the second person, and that you’re not even sure who you are anymore. Everything feels raw, your nerves pulsing beneath your bare skin. You realize you’ve gone from the occasional joy of a fat pants evening to a fat pants life, traversing a field without landmarks.