Scars

Got to thinking about scars this morning as I was driving home from a shopping trip.  In part it has to be due to seeing my back side in the dressing room mirror.  It's something I rarely look at and I saw a small scar I had forgotten I had.  And in part, it has to be due to my thinking about my mother-in-law.  One time, a long time ago, she kinda conducted a group therapy session with family, asking us to share a story about a scar we have.  I think she was introduced to this tactic during therapy she was undergoing at the time.   I think she was using it to reconnect with her children. 

So what are scars?  The dictionary says a scar is "a mark left after injured tissue has healed".  The key word here is "healed".  Scars are positive things.  Whatever caused the damage has long ago ended and while the scar is evidence of a trauma, that trauma is over.  Wounds are different.  They have yet to heal.  Some are slight and some can be gapping.  If neglected or worried, a wound can fester and worsen.  I'd much rather see a scar than a festering wound.

Anyway, I got to thinking about scars and wounds.  There are two kind -- physical and emotional.  Starting from bottom and moving up...  I've a scar on one of my knees.  It's really a kind of cyst.  Pencil lead.  I was in middle school and had a crush on a young man, I think his name was Bobby.  Somehow the boy I was sitting behind had this information.  Maybe I told him but that's unlikely.  Maybe he saw me writing his name on my notebook.  That's possible.  Anyway, I vaguely remember him starting to share this information with the class.  I hit him and he hit me back.  I hit him in the face with open hand.  He hit me in the knee with a very sharp pencil.  The lead broke off and has remained there, encased in scar tissue and flesh, for my lifetime, a reminder to be discreet and to be less physically reactive.  On both legs from above my knees to my upper thighs, there are faint lines that start with an round indentation.  These are the leftovers of my one and only college kegger.  You need to remember that was back in 1967, alcohol and privacy were less available to underage college freshmen.  I was out with a guy named Norm in the middle of a corn field, bonfire blazing, and alcohol being passed around.  Before the party really got going we saw headlights heading our way.  Norm panicked.  Well, maybe we all panicked.  But anyway, he grabbed my hand and pulled me into the standing corn.  Unfortunately, that particular field was fenced with barbed wire.  Norm missed it.  I didn't.  I must have run right into barbs on both legs and as I fell over, the barb scraped up my leg.  Thus ended my night out with Norm.  I spent the rest of the evening in the health clinic getting tetanus shots and mourning my now scar adorned legs. 
My torso is pretty much absent scars other than the mark I mentioned earlier.  I've had it as long as I can remember and have no idea how it got there.  On one elbow there is a semicircle scar.  It's one I got while cleaning out my oven.  I got oven cleaner on my elbow and didn't realize it until it had eaten through my skin and into my flesh.  I now have a self-cleaning oven.  On my right ear there is a bump midway between the bottom of the lobe and the top of my ear.  My mom was stepping on the scales.  I was probably in high school and full of myself.  I made a big show of getting down to see how much she weighed.  She backhanded me, sending me into the edge of the kitchen cabinet, hitting my ear.  A person's weight is private information.  I know, and understand, that now.  On my left upper lip, in the corner, there is a small bump, the result of a couple of stitches.  When I was in sixth grade or so, I was playing with a neighborhood guy.  I've always found boys easier to get along with than girls.  We were on our bikes and riding down a steep incline.  I don't know how many times I made it without falling but the last time, I managed to not only fall but to hit my face on a rock which went clean through my lip.  Of all my scars, that's one that I remember as a badge of honor.  The last known scar I have to mention runs from my left temple to behind my ear in a half moon.  It is the surgical incision made to clip the brain aneurysm I suffered when I was 35.  It is a constant reminder of how fragile life is and how lucky I am to be here.

I guess life is a kind of battle.  I doubt anyone gets through it without scars of one kind or another.  The key here is that each and every scar I mentioned has healed and has not kept me from living a full and happy life.  I've tried to learn from them, to see them as markers of experience.  Wounds yet to heal -- the emotional ones, the self-inflicted ones, those of the heart and soul -- are far more serious.  Perhaps I'll discuss those in some future blog entry.