Today is one of those more unusual commemorations: National Scar Appreciation Day. It was started in either 2018 or 2019 (information provided differs) by someone named Justine Faeth. This may or may not be the same person by that name who is an author listed on Amazon with a book titled Chat Love, and/or the Lady Justine Faeth who is on Twitter/X. It certainly doesn't seem to be a common name. The pages I found announcing National Scar Appreciation Day didn't say why she started it.
The gist of the day is that instead of just trying to hide our scars, we should acknowledge them for the evidence they show of the struggles we have been through and the fact that we have survived. Each scar tells a different story from your life, whether an accident, surgery, or whatever, and that you are still here to remember it. I have a lot of those scars, and they do help tell the story of my life.
Except sometimes there are scars you don't remember the origin of.
I have one of those. A sizeable scar, about an inch long, on my left forearm. It's been there as long as I can remember, ever since I was a very young girl.
I remember asking my mother about the scar and how I got it. And she said, "I don't remember."
I accepted that for years, because I believed my mother. Until recently, when it dawned on me that there is no way that my mother, who became hysterical at the slightest sight of her children's blood, could possibly have forgotten an incident that gave me a scar so pronounced that it has been with me for just about all of my 62 years. Because whatever caused this scar, it had to have bled. It looks like a pretty severe cut.
Which then leads me to wonder, what could have caused that injury that my mother wouldn't want to tell me about it? Was it something she did? I don't think it would have been deliberate, but some kind of accident? Did I fall and cut myself while she had turned her head momentarily? Did she drop something that hit me?
She's been gone almost 30 years, so I'm not getting the answer from her. I never thought to ask my father about it, and he's gone now also, for five years.
There are still a few people around who might know: my sister, my brother, my aunt. So I'm going to ask them, before I forget or can't. Because it's very frustrating when you don't know all of your own story.
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