What tales do your scars tell? Real or fake.
Scars. Visible marks that hide the tales of our life.
As the years pass my scars seem to accumulate.
The chubby scar on my knuckle from when I sliced through my finger cutting bread as a child. I thought I’d make my parents breakfast in bed. Blood sausage, anyone?
The long snake scar on my thumb that blazes white. A reminder of the day I slit my thumb open on my bike when I fell in the rain.
The full moon scar on my knee from when I ran along a cobblestone path and fell on a spiky rock.
The chunky scar on the bottom of my foot from a summer day. I had been jumping from rock to rock at waterfalls and slipped, landing on a jagged piece of glass. My boyfriend nearly fainted at all the blood. They never did get all the glass out. It sleeps there, still, a lumpy reminder under my skin.
The long line that cuts low across my abdomen where I had a dermoid tumor removed. Wonderfully benign.
Of course I could make up exotic, dangerous stories about these events – like Harrison Ford does so awesomely in Working Girl. But I think his real version confession in the movie is much sweeter. He actually got the real-life scar in a car accident. Check out some other celebs scars.
As a child I thought my belly button was a scar that would come undone and all my insides would fall out. I wore a band aid over it for weeks to keep that from happening. It must have worked.
My mother had cancer cut from her neck. One side of her was smooth and taut, the other wrinkled and worn. She joked how she wished she could have had the other side done too. But to me it was a daily reminder she was alive.
In my new novel I’m writing I’ve connected my characters by scars. They all have scars that bear the memory of dark times. Times they don’t want to relive, but carry a witness of always. Memories they can’t escape.
As a scar is a reminder of a healing process, I like to think I’ve done a lot of healing.
How about you? Do you have a scar that has a fascinating tale behind it? (or one you just want to make up?)
