The Scars We Bear

Marks of Character

[🎧Audio included for those who love to have a story read to them]

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Suicide Hill was for the big kids. Eight- and ten-year-olds were more apt to sled down Leafy Hill where the prolific tree coverage left a little autumn padding underneath the snowy track.

In our little forest behind our houses, a series of hills dotted the fields, some steeper than others, and led to the center low point with frozen swamps and the river meandering under the ice through the trails in a scene right out of Norman Rockwell’s portfolio.

Our woods surrounded The Rouge River in an idyllic patch of land on the outskirts of the city. When we told school chums we were from Detroit, the pictures in their minds were worlds away from the landscape of our childhood.

Summers provided long hours of daylight to learn these woods. We collected pollywogs. Brought them home in glass jars to watch them morph into miniature frogs jumping all over our backyard picnic tables. My sister brought home rabbits or pheasants while my brother raised turtles and snakes.

How many of you, while stooping to put clothes in the dryer, felt a snake slither right over your toes? Or how ‘bout closing yourself in the bathroom to wash your hands over little reptiles sharing the sink? Common occurrences at our house.

Winters, though, were for skating or testing out that old wooden toboggan my dad saved from his own childhood. Sleds with metal rungs cut through the slush nicely, and we dragged them through the woods to our favorite hills.

On one occasion, I situated myself, belly down, face first on top of my sled and waited patiently for my turn to glide. I watched my surroundings like a careful 8-year-old and noticed an older boy hiking up the hill. Pulling his toboggan behind.

I knew to wait until the path was clear, but a thoughtless other teen gave my sled a shove before I was ready.

Speeding down that icy hill, neither the boy climbing up, nor I could avoid a head-on collision. My face smacked into the corner of the toboggan as the boy tried to swing it out of the way.

Spotted black dots danced in front of my eyes.

Then a yellow filter seemed to alter the whole landscape.

Finally, I saw the red drops under me as someone lifted me up to the top of the hill to walk all the way home.

Guilt-ridden Toboggan Boy, who unnecessarily felt responsible, half carried me along the snowy path as my legs seemed to melt and refuse to support me. The boy who actually was responsible for the accident was nowhere-to-be-found. Toboggan Boy held a scarf to my chin to stave off the blood, and when we got home, my mom threw me in the car, grabbed her purse and took me to the hospital.

She told my dad later that “meat was hanging down from the gash.”

The side of my face swelled to the size of a cantaloupe, and apparently some inexperienced intern sewed me up because the scar remained jagged and rough. Surely, they must have advised plastic surgery for a later date, but here’s how my dad phrased his concern:

“We need to take you in to get that re-cut.”

For years afterward, looking at me, my dad would stop mid-conversation, run his thumb over the marred skin and utter those words. That frightened me, and I banked on his distraction with other more pressing issues of life. And we never did “re-cut” the scar.

I decided to wear the scar like it built character. At least during my more confident youth. I was not the only child left with wounds from Suicide Hill. My friend from across the street still wears what looks like a long centipede etched around her knee from grazing a tree stump on the way down. When we were growing up, my friends and I often played the game of naming what near-catastrophe caused this or that heroic mark.

As an adult, though, I have trouble viewing the scar as a sign of character. I know I should, but I don’t. Now it looks like a flaw to me. One of many I find myself gathering as I age.

The scars get deeper, cutting visible grooves in areas that used to be smooth. Even the inside wounds cause outside defects.

Many people in my life who see me often say they do not notice that scar on my face at all. It’s funny because when I look in the mirror, sometimes it’s all I see.

And when sifting through a treasure box of memories, yanking out and reexamining family stories the way you would old heirlooms and laying them out before me with a new perspective, I run my fingers over many jagged marks.

Should I re-cut them?

Putting family stories onto wrinkly paper seems to highlight those scars, at least at first.

But finding others to compare various wounds helps smooth out the surface a bit.

Do you have scars that need smoothing out? Picture sitting with a friend, pointing at this or that spot, and sharing the origins of each. Telling the stories that left lasting marks on you.

[🔗Link to Facing the Spiders where we see that those bruises & scrapes make you brave. ]

Some have said that writing is like therapy. I can see that.

But I am going to say here that writing is like plastic surgery.

[I love to hear from you, so drop me a comment or ♥️ if you are noticing more scars from way back. We can tell each other how beautiful those scars are and that they are indeed marks of character.]