TreeHouseView

When I was between four and five years old, I had surgery for an inguinal hernia. My scattered yet vivid memories of this time center on a couple different things–before the surgery I only really remember my mother stopping me as I ran pell-mell around the house and gently pressing on my lower stomach/groin area and then letting me resume my kid-centric activities. At the time, I had no idea that she was quite literally pressing my intestines back into my body, but as an adult remembering that odd interaction, it now makes sense.

My mom was not a demonstrative person and didn’t hug unless I pestered her for affection. She didn’t offer physical demonstrations of her love on any kind of a regular basis, so any time she wanted to gently put her hands on me, I would willingly take it.

The surgery itself I have no memory of, but I do have some snippets of recall from my hospital room that I shared with a toddler in a hospital crib–these memories are the souvenirs of the experience that I carry to this day that mean more than all of the toys I received at the time. I’ve always been the mothering kind, and this baby played the game with me of dropping their toys outside their crib for me to jump out of my bed and run over to pick up the toy and give back them on repeat. Squals of joy and laughter must have been heard up and down the hall of that unit! I remember being scolded for this after surgery, as I was supposed to be “resting”.

I also remember being overwhelmed with the amount of toys I received–it wasn’t my birthday or Christmas, and at that young of an age, I couldn’t understand why I was the recipient of so many presents!

An inguinal hernia is in the groin and the scar is in the bikini area, so not visible to the general public and very few people know that I even have it. The scar from the surgery was one that I was told would fade over time and most likely not even be noticeable or even possbily could be fully faded once I was an adult.

But I know it’s there. It is very much there. It did not go away or fade to the point that it isn’t noticeable as the docs said it might back in the 70s. It’s fair to point out that I scar if you breathe on me wrong, so even if it’s true that some people may experience scars that fade away completely, I will never be one of those people, no matter the skill of the surgeon.

That might be the scar that I actually carry–the promise of no scar. I’m not vain enough to think or worry that a scar that isn’t even visible mars me in any way, and even if the scar was on my body in a place that was visible, I actually think scars can be beautiful. They tell a story, and I love to hear a story. It’s the fact that I was told to expect something that never came true–the promise of a fairy tale ending that was never realized in a way.

I carry the scar tissue of disappointment in someone telling me to expect an outcome and then waiting for the ending to that tale that never arrived. I tell my husband all the time that I’m a “literal person”, as in if you tell me something, I’m going to take you at your word. As a four year old, I believed I would be unmarred by that surgery because the Powers That Be told me it was so, and it wasn’t true.

If anything has scarred me for life, it’s that. My cynical nature was born from the scars tissue of disappointment.