Forgive the size here. I've been blogging for 17 years or so, but I don't remember ever using a shot of myself like this or any other. This is me and I'm huge. My friend Jo Alberda took it at Sandy Hollow, when I needed something good for a book titled CRC Family Portrait. That book came out in 1982, forty years ago, which makes the me, here, 33 years old. I landed it here this morning because I'm going to run an ancient essay that's even older--going on 50--an essay about that scar, the one you can't miss.
I found the scarface essay when dumping old files, which is not a fun job. It's a little essay I thought I could be funny enough to sell. When push came to shove, I never submitted it anywhere; but I was happy to find it because I'm wrapping up a writing life by collecting things that, together, I hope constitute a memoir, my life story. I want there to be something around, something I don't have from my own great-grandparents on either side, something about how they lived.
From before I was two years old, I've lived with a mean scar down my left cheek--that one. To those who know me, that's not news, and me? --I don't know life without it.
So we're out there at Sandy Hollow, and Jo is directing me how to sit, where to look, how to hold my head, you know. "Now turn a bit more toward the sun--I've got to get that scar," she says, wielding her SLR.
I hadn't even thought of the scar. I remember her directions because she most certainly did.
That portrait, up top, long ago, found its place on the book's back cover.
~*~*~*~
When Cain murdered Abel, God planted a mark on his forehead to signify that he had sinned grievously. The mark was to stay with him for the rest of his born days so everyone would identify Cain as, well, undesirable.I don't remember doing anything quite so horrendous as murder before my second birthday. I may have wet a few diapers and kept Mom and Dad from sleeping, but nothing quite so out of the ordinary for any run-of-the-mill year-old kid. Regardless, I, too have borne a mark that has and will stay with me for however long death may tarry.
In January, 1950, soon after Christmas, our family made a trip to Grandpa's house to celebrate the holiday season. As usual, Grandma made sure she had all the seasonal goodies prepared, the new toys set out in plain view for the grandkids. Among them was a colorful, new pin-ball machine, not a big one found in pool halls, but a smaller game designed to set on the floor. As far as I can remember, this particular model looked much like any other toy pin-ball machine, except by some genius of manufacturing, the toy-makers had neglected to lay glass over the playing surface, leaving the metal pegs exposed.
That pin-ball game dominated our attention for the afternoon, and only when we ran to the holiday table did the marbles rest in the tray at the bottom of the machine.
Let me make this clear: I always liked my sister. She was and is three years older than me, and she was a girl, but she never bothered me in any ways other than any usual older sister might.
After supper she went back to the living room floor and resumed play on the delightful little game, placing it next to the Christmas tree so as to get a little additional light, then bent over on all fours in front, creating an inviting little horse to any year-old cowboy. I hopped on, decided to make a game of her.
She didn’t consent to the horseplay. She wriggled and shook at first, kind of half-heartedly, then told me to get off. Truth be told, my weight wasn't that substantial—I was not yet two--to take her attention off the marbles zigzagging down through those posts. When she decided she'd had enough, she lifted her lets like a rodeo bronc and tossed me off. Thus began my life as a marked man.
I made a perfect one point landing in the field of posts set into the wonderful Christmas toy, face first. Those nasty little posts did their thing, or, so I am told, because when I came up for air my face looked like Antietam.
Early adolescence was a strange time. People didn’t know what to ask since it was too early for a fight and too late for a cat. Besides talking about pimples was hard enough for a kid that age, how much worse could it be some poor kid about a big scar like mine.
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