Scars

I was taking stock of the various scars I have on my body just the other day after I was reminded of it in a song. I am not usually in the habit of examining myself at length—believe it or not—especially not in the mirror, but some of these you can't see without a mirror's aid. Sorry about the mental image that might give you.

On my left forearm there is a small, triangular divot that I got while diving a shipwreck off the coast of Florida a few years back. Just a little ways down from that is the discolored oval that has been there since childhood, the result of a deep rope burn I got from a tire swing. It has a matching oval from the same incident on my left calf. On my left temple: a small indentation that was once a not so small outline of a sapling stump I stumbled and fell face first onto as a kid.

My hands are riddled with various remnants of nicks and scrapes I have collected over time. In my years on the railroad I handled metal drums that sometimes had too sharp an edge and worked on diesel engines and heavy equipment that sometimes liked to bite the hand that cared for it. There was no shortage of things during my tenure in the lawn and landscape industry that could, and did, produce a scar or two. I have a raised patch on my left knee from a belt that snapped off of an aerator. Even the retail world is not without hazard; some of the healed-over cuts that litter the backs of my hands come from thousands and thousands of strokes of a box cutter.

One rather large scar that stretches from my sternum to my beltline is one that has long been a significant part of my life and my self-image. It is a surgical scar from an operation that saved my life when I was twelve. To make a long story short (yes, I can do that), I fell off a cliff while on an outdoor adventure with some of my friends in the woods outside of Mosby. I got up and walked away from that fall and went home like nothing happened, because I was someplace with my friends that my mother had forbidden me from being. I had to tell the truth about 2am the next morning when they had to rush me into emergency surgery to remove the spleen I had ruptured.

That scar I only think about whenever I go to the pool with my daughters. It's been with me most of my life, but I forget about it even being there until I am in that shirtless situation. And I likely wouldn't think about it even then, except that I notice other people noticing it. As I walk to and from the pool to my chair, or to and from the snack bar, I occasionally see their eyes lock in on it, and then I see them noticing me noticing them looking at it, and they quickly avert their eyes.

But the scar that has always been the biggest in my life is the one that I have carried with me the entirety of it, the one that has been there since birth: I was born with a cleft lip. For as long as I can remember, people called it (in general, mind you, not to me) a harelip. That term took on a negative meaning some time ago, so I guess they came up with the technical term of cleft lip in order to be more sensitive and politically correct about it. But I have still always called it a harelip. It didn’t matter to me.

I was one of the lucky ones, actually, that was not also born with a cleft palate. In those cases, the individual is also born with either a large gap or a completely missing roof to their mouth. That is what creates the speech difficulty and unfortunate stigma that comes with it, something that often rears it’s ugly head in the teasing and mocking of people that suffer from it. But in my case, my upper lip was simply split down the middle and attached to my nose. One of Kansas City’s best plastic surgeons at the time, doing charity work at Children’s Mercy Hospital, repaired the split and created the nostrils that did not exist for me.

My scar is minimal. I was fortunate. In fact, I feel pretty fortunate about all of my scars. For me, each is a product of an experience and they serve to remind me of a particular instance in my life. I can remember almost every instance where I accumulated each one, and at this stage in my life, I can’t bring myself to regret a single one of them, even though every one of them hurt like hell when I got them. There was real pain involved in collecting them, and to a degree there is a small amount of pride I now carry with them.

They were all also lessons learned. Whenever I go diving, which is not as often as it used to be, I tend to watch myself around rusted and sharp metal on shipwrecks. I use my box blade with a little more care and cut away from myself these days. Whenever I work on something mechanical I am mindful of hot mufflers, belts, sharp edges, and various moving parts that represent potential hazards. And I avoid tire swings altogether.

But my personal history tells me that I will likely find other ways to accumulate scars. And some of them may be more or less visible than the ones I have discussed here. Some only I will ever know about. Some may even be of my own invention.

The other day I reconnected with a Facebook friend with whom I had not spoken to for many a year. We had been on each others’ friends list for some time now, but we had never really actually talked, and we had neglected to do the even better thing that real friends do, which is pick up the phone and call. He sent me a message one day this week asking me to call him about something important that he had to get off his chest, saying that he needed to apologize to me for something he had done. He had been carrying that regret around with him for nearly two decades. And after he apologized I told him that there was never really anything to forgive or to apologize for. It was his scar, not mine. Then, I think, we talked on for another hour more after that, with any misconceptions of hurt or ill feelings evaporating for him in each word we shared. I think he doesn’t necessarily even notice it any more.

After I hung up with him I got to wondering just how many regrets or scars we each carry around with us, and—more importantly—whether or not we should. I have had my share. Some of them have been self-inflicted, others injuries to me. But nowadays it gets easier and easier for me to forgive myself my mistakes and move on. It is also easier to forgive others.

When I was sixteen, my dad sat me down to talk to me about something. I could tell that it was serious; he almost never had the look on his face that I saw then. He asked me about my cleft lip scar and how I felt about it, and he asked me if other kids in school ever ask me about it or maybe teased me about it. It was kind of a puzzle to me why he asked, because by that point in my life even I had begun to forget about it. The only time I ever noticed it, and I think the same was true for my friends and others, was when I would sleep on my face wrong and make it more noticeable. Otherwise, it only came up out of sincere curiosity now and then.

But dad had taken the time to reconnect with Dr. McCoy and look into the possibility of my having more corrective surgery done to make it less noticeable. He told me what he and the doctor discussed. He showed the good doctor a recent school photo. Plastic surgery had come a long ways in the sixteen years since I was born, and hearing about some of that was what prompted dad to look into it. He said that the surgery would be expensive, but that he would find a way to make it happen. And then he told me one thing the doctor said that finally sealed my decision: he said the doctor told him that there was also a chance that the surgery could result in the scar being worse than it was at the time..

I remember thinking, “Why the hell would I want that?” I was pretty happy with my looks and didn’t see the need in the risk. I was happy with how I saw myself. Still am. Scars and all.

Originally published 11/11/09.

© 2009 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.