What stories do they tell? A tragic accident on the road? An argument gone wild?
A talent agent-photographer once told me. "You know you shouldn't just be a voice talent, you can actually pass for an on-cam talent, but you have a big scar over there (pointing to my temple)." As you can tell, she's a friend. Honest, no-holds-barred encouraging kind of a friend.
So I respond: Oh, that one.
She was one of the very few who have boldly asked me about that scar. Another time, I caught a friend's younger sister (aged 4 or 5 then) staring at me. As she drew closer and closer and uncomfortably closer to me, I asked her what's the matter. She replied with a query, "Bakit ka may bi-ak dyan? (pointing and touching the famous scar)"
Oh, that one.
Just the other week, my 3yo daughter did the same thing. But she was less brutal: "Nanay, what happened to that? Why is there a hole there?" And like a Filipino, referred to it by pointing her lips towards the right side of my face.
Oh, that infamous one.
"You see, Miro," I recognized the window of opportunity, "when I was around your age, I disobeyed Mama. I jumped and jumped on the sofa even if she told me not to. I lost my balance, fell and hit this part of my head on the corner of our glass table." She seemed stunned. I wonder if she felt the impact of the fall, or the impact of warning her not to disobey.
My mother pinched this wound of mine intending for the skin to naturally stick together again without any need for sutures. She stayed at it even as I slept through the afternoon, She was afraid that if she took me to the hospital, the stitches would affect my right eye. I asked her, "You mean, they might touch a nerve and affect my sight?' "No," Mama was quick to correct me. "The stitches and the scar might pull your eye and distort it, making it different from the other eye."
Oh, that wise mother of mine.
This is the same woman who tried to "naturally seal and heal" the cut on my palm when I tripped on the floor, breaking a ceramic tea cup I was holding. I was just a toddler then. She told me how she painstakingly clamped my skin manually with her fingers throughout the day.
I have another scar on my left outer ankle. My playmate-neighbor was playing one-on-one "soccer" with me one afternoon. The game was called soccer by the neighborhood kids, but it was an outdoor group activity more like baseball. You kick the ball and run across the perimeter of a diamond, touching three bases to get back to homebase.
I must've been around 10 or 11 then. The ball went to this part of our yard which was covered with freshly-cut coconut leaves. As I was about to reach for the ball, I twisted my ankle and landed on a broken glass bottle. I remember it was a Sarsi (sarsaparilla) bottle. I don't know how I did it but I still managed to get the ball and go back to our play area. When I checked my foot, I saw blood oozing from an open and what seemed to me, a very deep cut. I didn't know what to do so I asked my playmate to get alcohol. And she ran to the house, but I called her back, realizing it would sting. So I just asked for a dipper of water. She left again, but I called her back. "Please get cotton, or a towel or... call Ate Lina." My playmate was hurrying to and fro, back and forth to me and to my house. She was the one who was panicking for me.
This time I had to be taken for stitching by my mother, who arrived a bit late that night, catching me trying to wash myself up seated on a bathroom stool, with my leg lifted on another stool. I think that incident rendered my ankle weak for the rest of my life, as 4 or 5 years later, it was the same ankle that I injured the day before my Junior-Senior Prom. Imagine me in heels dancing the cotillion with a swollen foot. That would make another story.
The final (hopefully the last) major scar of mine is on my abdomen. It's the result of three Cesarian Section (CS) births, sliced, then closed three times. I did not choose to deliver through CS. But the procedure was necessary. The first, because my second baby was in a transverse breech position; the second was an emergency case—the baby was having fetal distress as I attempted to give birth the Lamaze way; while the third was a scheduled CS. The gap between the last birth and this one was too short and my OB-Gynecologist did not want to risk rupture of the previous wound.
This is the battle scar I used to be embarrassed about. But after my second surgery, when a friend of mine complained about how her CS scar really made her feel so ugly, I radically realized that this battle scar was the most beautiful mark on my body.
The temple scar was about the consequences of disobedience, and the value of a mother's...shall we say, sense of vainglorious concern for her child.
The palm scar was about the reality that stumbling is inevitable, as we learn and grow through life, and a mother's persevering commitment.
The ankle scar was about a friend's readiness to help me, and how I must have the readiness to know how to help myself.
There are many other little scars: the chicken pox scars, the scar on my knee, the invisible scar of my big toe. I say invisible because I thought it would never get better. Yet, I don't see any trace of it now. You see, when I was perhaps 7 or 8 years old, I tripped over a galvanized sheet on Good Friday at the farm. According to my mom, children should not play on Good Friday because the old folks say wounds that "happen" on that holy day will never be healed.
Oh, and the acne scars! Ahh...those talk about how impatient I was as a teenager, squeezing my pimples, hurrying their healing. They will always remind me of late nights as a teen, either partying or finishing some schoolwork; and of first and/or crazy love.
The CS scar?
It was all about how I have laid down my life, possibly ending it, for the beginning of another life. Three times.
It is long, ugly and sometimes still feels tender, specially when the room is cold. But its pain is nothing compared to the scars on my Savior's side, and on his hands, and on his feet. They are results of deep, undeserved wounds.
Those scars are about God's sacrificial love for me—the one who wounds easily. And heals only, by His grace.
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