Birthmark

I was holding my daughter in my arms one day, when she was nearly three months old, admiring the loveliness of her face. How large and bright her eyes were, how her lashes were long and dark and curled up gently to kiss her eyebrows. How her sweet little nose was shaped so much like mine. How the dimple on her right cheek was the mark of her biggest smiles. How her chin swept down into a soft curve. How her cheeks, like those of my father and all the relatives before him, were cherubic globes.

But as I looked at her, admiring what I'd created, I wondered how long it had been since I had given her a bath. I only realized she might need a good scrub down when I saw some dirt on her face. So I took her into the bathroom and attempted to soap off the darker spot. After trying everything but a Brillo pad I realized that our child was not dirty, but instead, had a faint birthmark by her left eye.

This excited me.

Babies are so pretty and pristine. New, fresh, painstakingly perfect. And Caucasian babies? Well, let's be honest. They all look alike. Now I not only had a beautiful, smooth, perfectly formed baby, but one with a distinguishing characteristic. Something that was hers and no one else's. And finally, something that would give me a quick visual sign that she was my baby so I would stop trying to leave day care with other people's babies in my arms. Seriously. All white babies look alike.

I also liked that she had this particular birthmark because I had several of the same kind scattered about my body. These marks are just slightly darker than my natural skin tone, and they only appear with some extended period of sun exposure. I have one on my wrist that looks like the Virgin Islands, and I have one on my chest that looks like Wisconsin. Lowery's, however, was far more striking and glorious than my American marks. As she aged and spent more time at the park, we begin to notice hers was an exact replica of Africa. 

On the middle of her bottom left eyelid is Algeria. Sierra Leone sits where her cheek raises for a smile and it sweeps beautifully off to the side of her face, with Angola, Nambia and the far southern tip reaching down just to the bottom of her cheek bone. And, with amazingly geographical accuracy, she has another smaller spot just south and east of Mozambique: Madagascar. 

This birthmark is only faintly noticable when you first look at her. Most flashes on cameras completely wash it out. When she spends a few days indoors it almost disappears. But when she faces the sun while splashing around in her kiddie pool, or waddles around the backyard chasing the dogs, it begins to appear, ever so slightly darker than her normally golden skin. And mine appear, as I sit beside her in the sun, and I'm warmed by the thought that we are bursting with colors together.

It never occurred to me that anyone would have looked upon this beautiful mark as anything but a representation of my child's own uniqueness and her genetic connection to her mother. But it should have. 

Because people can suck.

When I was a mere eight years old I was in a horrific car accident. Aside from broken bones and blurry vision, my face was severely mangled by the gravel and brush on the side of the road that I landed on after being thrown clear of the car. 

I underwent extremely invasive facial surgery to try to repair the right side of my face, my chin and my forehead. And though the doctors did meticulous and brilliant work, they left me with a patch of new, bright pink flesh on my cheek and told me it would never have freckles like the rest of my face. A gaping wound on the top of my forehead looked like old, minced, wrinkled flesh, and the gash on my chin--that runs vertically from the left side of my bottom lip and down--would be a scar I'd have to learn to live with. Don't worry, this story has the happiest of endings. Buck up.

Over time, the wrinkly wound on my forehead moved up into my hair as I grew, and I really have to search along my hairline to even feel it anymore. The pinkness of my cheek faded within a few years and--despite the doctor's medical opinion--freckles grew rampantly, blending in almost seamlessly with the rest of my rampant freckles. And the scar on my chin faded by the time I hit high school, to the pale shade of the rest of my face. The swollen, bumpy scar tissue subsided so that it no longer looked like I needed a spittoon. And while there is still a large scar there, it's pretty easy to cover most of it with a touch of makeup. I don't even notice it anymore when I look in the mirror.

But just because I fail to see it doesn't mean the world doesn't notice. For years, while I was still extremely traumatized by the car accident, strangers in stores would come up to my mother and her young, scar-faced daughter and say, "What happened to her?" I don't actually know how my mother handled these moments because I always took off walking in a different direction, leaving her to defend me. When I got older, strangers stopped asking my mother and started asking me. "What's wrong with your face?" One lady (yes, an adult) even asked me once if I had severe poison ivy. And if so, to stay away from her. 

Yep. People can suck.

And they can feel an extreme sense of entitlement by noticing something different about you and demanding you give them an explanation. 

But over time I came to field these kinds of questions quite well. "Oh, it's an old wound from a car accident 15 years ago." Or, "Bar fight." Or, "Go f**k yourself." But hearing the question still makes my eyes hot. I'm not sure that will ever go away. But even if it never does, I've accomplished the impossible. I fought through trauma and the vanities of junior high and I've learned to love my face. 

So I shouldn't have been surprised a couple of weeks ago at the craft store when the 90-year-old sales clerk looked at my sweet, precious daughter, who was saying "HI!" and waving feverishly, and exclaimed "Dear God! What happened to her face?"

I stopped dead.

"Whatever do you mean?" I said in what I know was pure bitch.

"Looks like she has a black eye. Was she injured?"

She was posing two questions here, yes? Or maybe just two statements. That my child looked different and that I might be beating her up a little.

"It's a birthmark. Certainly you've seen one before." I shot back at her.

"I meant nothing by it," she said flatly. "It just looks like she got hit."

Yep. As I said, people are the shits.

I could refuse to shop there I guess. Or call the manager. Or wait in the parking lot for her after her shift and jump her. But that doesn't take away from other questions Lowery might get every summer when her beautiful continent appears on her perfectly perfect face.

A few days later at Lowery's one year check up the doctor commented on her birthmark. I puffed up like a puffer fish and shot at her: "It's beautiful." She laughed and said "Yes, I agree. Gives her character." I sighed with relief until she asked, "But does she have any others?"

I looked at her strangely and said "Well, she has a very small one on her right butt cheek that looks like Saudi Arabia, and an even teenier one on her hip that looks vaguely like Iceland. Why?"

Turns out that 6 or more of the types of birthmarks that Lowery and I have can be a sign of neurofibromatosis. Which is a scary-as-hell disorder in which a child develops tumors on her nerves. So the doctor got out the tape measure and tried to see the faint spots well enough to measure them for a total number of birthmark centimeters.

As any normal parent does, I lost my shit. But the doctor explained that birthmarks, 90 percent of the time, are genetic. She asked if I had similar marks. When I tried to unbutton my pants and rip off my bra, she said she believed me and there was no need to show her. She also said that neurofibromatosis has other tell-tale signs, like being delayed in speech (Lowery started talking at eight months and hasn't shut up since), or a small head (I don't need to quote what percentile she's in; my vagina can confirm its mass), and we have no history of it on either side of our family. And even if she was one of the 1 in 4000 children who has this, there is nothing we can do until she's 5 or older.

But Lowery's doing just fine. Talks excitedly to every stranger in the grocery store. Kisses anyone who will stand still long enough. Talks in her sleep. Dances to any music, including cell phones ringing. Giggles at anything her father does. Wants nothing in this world but to be read to and tickled and to eat her weight in goldfish crackers. And even her teachers at day care insist she's the smartest, happiest baby in the class. 

I'm not going to let the rude questions of strangers, or the inquiries of my overly cautious doctor, distract me from my first thoughts about my child's health and beauty. And I won't let the trauma of my past be projected onto my child. Questions about her birthmark may not ever bother Lowery. There's not a traumatic story behind her lovely birthmark. It's not a sensitive subject for her. Though it's inevitable she'll grow up with her own touchy subjects like we all do. Go ahead, ask me if I breastfed or how much older my husband is than me.

More than likely, Lowery will grow up to be brilliant, accomplished, witty, compassionate, thoughtful and loved. And, inevitably, gorgeous. And maybe one day she'll visit Africa and feel so connected to it that she'll live there, make change there and maybe, just maybe, raise a daughter there.

But for now you can damn sure guarantee how I'll handle the next cashier who rudely suggests my child's birthmark is anything less than glorious.

I'll leave a mark on her ass, shaped very much like Italy.