scars

I had my weekly Asian and chat meeting with my best friend this past Thursday night. She had read my blog and just asked why there seemed to be a reoccurring theme of scars in my work. I said, ‘because I have them.” And she sort of rolled her eyes, replying, “well, we all do…”

And I smiled wryly, and nodded. I mean, my best friend, a family lawyer, and I, a generic white-looking chick, are sitting in Pei Wei, in an upper-middle class neighborhood. The most we would appear to have would be, as the fabulous Susan Isaacs would say, would be middle class white girl problems.

But I was one of those kids you read about in the paper. The ones that didn’t eat, or didn’t get medical treatment because their parents were crazy or just didn’t care. And when I say my dad was crazy, I’m not being dramatic. He was certifiable.

I didn’t wear lace as a little girl not because it was too girly, but because lace would let the demons in. And I know that, given the option between tuna with mustard and tuna with ketchup, you go with the ketchup because the mustard’ll scratch your throat after a few bites. And I know that there’s a certain smell that means Daddy’s talked to God again, and you should hide, hide fast, hide now.

The kindest  thing my dad ever did for me was to marry my stepmother, and decide that day to never talk to me again. She, it turns out, is a lovely woman, and made him a halfway decent human. Now that he's gone, she mourns him. A good-hearted, Catholic woman who sings in the choir and teaches teachers to teach kids cried when she told me my dad was dead.

And I sat there, disquieted by her tears and unsure what to say or offer other than a Kleenex.

Scars? I have a few.