Scars and Mothers

I was thinking back to my childhood, and I realized just how hard I was on my mom. As a child, all I (and my mother) have ever heard was "Oh, such a pretty child!", "Oh, she takes after her beautiful mother.", "She's so pretty; I wonder what she'll look like when she grows up."

Looking back at my old photos, I really was. The little kid me glowed even through the old picture with cheery precociousness, with that intangible feel of standing out of the crowd. My mother's old photos of herself as a girl are the same way. Both of us stand out in that strange way, just too different, too unique to blur into nothing in a crowd.

Now, when I look over myself, I realize to my own shock that I did inherit a lot of my mother's good features. My complexion is smooth, my hair is thick, my features are somewhat European, despite my obvious Asian descent.

And yet...I wonder if she's still haunted somewhat by my scars?

When I was seven, I received a gash on my chin, 6 stitches in total. She was there with me in the emergency room, but I wasn't the one who needed comforting. Then, when I was in 5th grade, a large collie bit me squarely in the face. My nose, my cheek was torn, and the doctor said worriedly that the gashes were uneven.

That time, it was my brother who stood with me as the doctor sewed up the wounds, while my mother sobbed outside the door, unable to bear the sight of bright blood, flashing needle, and her own child lying on the bed, pale and shell-shocked. I forget how many stitches there were. All I can remember was pain due to the fact that the doctor couldn't put in so much anethsia on my brain, and my brother's hand growing numb and fingernail-marked as I gripped onto him like a lifeline. I guess...he was, of a sort. He really is my brother, despite our vastly different souls.

After that, my mother seemed to go somewhat mad in my child's eyes. She spent money here and there, buying products promising smooth skin, blemish removal. She got this strange silicon patch that I was to wear to bed, and even through the day if I could manage it. There were powders, creams, and even, to my utter disbelief, a plastic surgeon. I never did actually undergo surgery to remove my scars, but it stuck in my head for a long time. Was my mother ashamed of my scars?

I know now that she was only scared for me. She had given birth to what was like a model of future beauty, a perfect girl child. And now, scars would rip away her daughter's beauty and steal from her something material, but precious all the same. She gave me lectures, tried to impress on me the importance of taking care of my skin, my face, my scars. I rebelled. I was a wild child, not to be bound by rules of physical beauty.

My scars are faint now, hardly visible, but every so often the light will show strange rises and falls on my skin. I wonder sometimes...

Does my mother still wish that I was a quieter child, still unmarred and perfect?