Creek Running North

I don’t have many serious scars. My right hand has a collection of semi-interesting small ones though. First the inside wrist pressed too hard on a pane of glass, then a small break in a bone and a chunk of flesh missing from the outside wrist after making direct contact with the grill of a pickup truck and then the pavement, apparently after a bit of sailing from impact to landing, which I fortunately cannot recall (and only minor scars thanks to a Montana winter coat transplanted to California).

But I’m very attached to my scars… they’re like trophies or battle medals. I’ve fought some fights… well, scraps anyway, and walked away to fight again another day.

Ah, the narrative of the object.  How many young lovers have traded scar stories between light fingertips, naked and vulnerable and yearning to know?

The crinkled spot on my left cheek running into my mouth from 14 stitches at age 7, thanks to a big chomp from Charlie the shepherd/St Bernard mix.  The big patch of lighter skin on the outside of my left calf, thanks to a wipeout rounding third base (I still scored!).  And the bigger patch of light skin on the inside of my right arm, thanks to my clumsiness as I carried a vat of boiling spaghetti (enough to feed 8) from stove to sink. 
All of these are fading, slowly.  I don’t feel the pain anymore, of course.  But I do remember the teammate’s wife who ran to her car to get the first aid kit, the friends who took me to the hospital and stayed with me while the ER doctor peeled off the scalded skin.

The inner scars are much worse.  For me the most painful of all are the self-inflicted wounds, like an inner bell tolling as I recall the hurts I’ve inflicted on others.

tip of my thumb, nearly lost in an enthusiastic bout of cutting veggies.  my c-section scar.  the bites of long-dead mosquitos, etched in white against what my doctor calls “sun damage.” assorted scratches, burns, sites of former moles. 

my husband:  scars on his shoulder and near his eye, from a bike accident that left him unconscious up on grizzly peak blvd.; 15 years, and i still feel queasy thinking what would have happened if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet.  my son:  17 stitches in his hand and arm, from attempting to jump his bike over a large rock at inspiration point.  my daughter:  her knee, age 4—she screamed so loud and long that the ER finally gave up on trying to stitch her, and settled for butterfly bandages.

the question your seatmate posed—maybe it is because there are young adults in my life, but it struck me as an interesting snapshot of that time when confidence in the breadth of one’s experience stands side by side with an innocence and vulnerability.  my children sometimes startle me this way.  they’ll all figure out soon enough that they will collect more scars on their journeys, that others also have scars, that some will heal well, and some will be less visible but more long lasting.

I have one on my knee from a day camp trip, inntertubing in the Fox River and making contact with a pop-top in the sandy riverbed. All of the camp counselors thought it was someone else’s job to bring the first aid kit, so I was bandaged with the school bus driver’s handkerchief.

My son’s rough-and-tumble and has plenty of small scars. His only (nonsurgical) stitches came from splitting his forehead flesh open. His dad was with him when it happened and ran him to the nearby ER in a jogging stroller. (Ccan you believe they don’t sell those with optional mars lights? Apparently the kid didn’t cry through any of the needle business, and found the Popsicle afterwards to be the most memorable part.

Minutes after reading this post last night, I kick-started my blog and wrote about my biggest scar (emergency C-section) and my most dramatic (explosives! from above! for Independence Day). Who doesn’t love recounting their scar stories?

Orange: I still have a scar under my lower lip that is a perfect impression of my upper teeth, made when my dad accidentally pushed me on a swing when I wasn’t holding on at my 6th birthday party.  The only thing I remember about the whole thing is that my mom gave me a birthday cookie to make me feel better, not realizing that I’d bitten through the lip and was bleeding inside too.  I just remember biting the cookie, pulling it away covered in blood, and crying harder for the ruined cookie than I’d cried over the injury.  It’s funny how memory works.

…a moment of thoughtless pride making wounds the heart’s web cannot reinhabit.

A brief pause, re-orienting.

Enthusiastic applause! Bravo.