SCARS

I’m getting a new scar. It hasn’t arrived yet, I’m still healing, but I already love it. This one is going to be a crescent along the side of my right hand like a smiley face, an emoticon for my skin. Frankly I was getting tired of the Old Hand. Year after year of the same nails, same hair, same rings. In the minute range of things about myself I can physically change, this scar was unexpected but I‘ve decided to cut to the chase, skip all the regret and cosmetic concern and embrace my new scar.

“Welcome to Hugh’s Body. Here are the other scars - Knee Scar, Thyroid Scar, Leg Scar (rumor is he’s from an Alien Implant). Guys, this is Hand Scar.”

“Hand scar, huh?” grumbles Leg Scar, “ why I remember when Hugh was just a little boy, knocked down by that damn poodle his mother’s friends owned. I was a big deal in those days, believe you me, before AIDS and all. Nowadays a scar is nuthin’, might as well be a headache.”

He then sits in his place, his job done. All there is now is the waiting, day after day, until he fades to nothing with the rest of my body.

Indeed, like all scars, the beginning holds all the drama - initial shock and pain followed by waiting and time before becoming a mere bump in the skin. I fell in my apartment onto a glass table top with a resounding crash worthy of any barroom brawl. I sat up on the floor surrounded by the shards, unsure if I’d hurt myself. I was rattled and sore in a couple of places. Only my right hand was cut (I had probably used it to break my fall) and there was blood, a small but steady stream dripping off the end of my pinky. I felt the drops rolling down my hand and I imagined at that moment my fingers over a silver chalice, filling it with blood like an ancient ritual before holding it in both hands to the sky as an offering - tainted as it may be - to the gods.

The cut was in an odd place so I bought a variety of products to cover it and stay in place. The result made me look like a one-handed boxer, white tape wrapped around my thumb and across my palm. I looked like Trouble, a fighter with bruised knuckles torn in a swift right hook to my opponent's face. Romantic notions aside, it was a little much and a large Band Aid worked just as well.

Band Aids never stick on both sides. One side cements to my skin while the other feigns cooperation until abandoning it’s job, the edges peeling away like old stamps or bark off a tree. I carefully lift what I can to look under the gauze at my wound like a cook checking on soup. A watched pot never boils and making scars takes time, the seams of flesh eventually joining to valiantly keep my blood inside.

A few days ago I was at the dog park with Polly and I looked down and my scar had failed, the wound had opened and my hand in the grass was suddenly covered in blood. The red was shiny and bright against the vivid green of the lawn, like a scene from a Christmas Horror Movie. I got napkins from the refreshment stand and wrapped my hand before coming home to clean off.

I was surprised to discover salt removes blood from fabric despite it’s reputation with wounds. Take cold water and make a paste which will remove the spots and wash away the discoloring. The thing that causes most pain - the salt, the sting, the bad memories, the resentment - is sometimes needed to wash away the stain. Finally we’re left with only a scar to remind us of where we’ve been.

9:36:30 PM    sro home /