I have a scar that starts between my third and fourth knuckle and extends halfway down the back of my left hand. It's a straight, white, broken line caused by the family pet when I was three or four. I only vaguely remember what happened but I'm sure I deserved it. For some reason, I never told my parents I'd been bitten. The dog died on my first day of school a year later. I was up early to get ready and I was the one who found her on the couch, with her tongue lolling out.
They buried her under the apple tree in the back garden and every year in which the apples were good, I saw a look in my mother's eye somewhere between affection, and gratitude, and lingering loss. The neighbours and my dad often wanted to cut the tree down because it blocked the light but my mother wouldn't have it. I think she'd have defended it with her life. We sold the house when my childhood ended and my mother found out from the ex-neighbours, a year or two later, that the new owners had cut the tree down to a stump. To them, it was just an apple tree. Maybe not even that. Maybe just an annoyance.
There's a tradition in my family of keeping the collars of pets when they have gone; some last tangible link to them, I guess. It was after the news of the apple tree that my mother discovered the collar had been lost in the house move. I guess she must have been looking for it specifically because of the tree.
We have our memories, but memories aren't permanent and - in some ways - are unreal. When I look at the back of my hand, that scar is real. It links me directly to the past and to that dog and to what happened that day. I'm glad to have it. It's not like a mole or a blemish or something natural. It's the mark of an event, the proof of a life, a physical sign of how we change each other, how even animals change us.
i want to hear a scar story
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I have a scar that starts between my third and fourth knuckle and extends halfway down the back of my left hand. It's a straight, white, broken line caused by the family pet when I was three or four. I only vaguely remember what happened but I'm sure I deserved it. For some reason, I never told my parents I'd been bitten. The dog died on my first day of school a year later. I was up early to get ready and I was the one who found her on the couch, with her tongue lolling out.
They buried her under the apple tree in the back garden and every year in which the apples were good, I saw a look in my mother's eye somewhere between affection, and gratitude, and lingering loss. The neighbours and my dad often wanted to cut the tree down because it blocked the light but my mother wouldn't have it. I think she'd have defended it with her life. We sold the house when my childhood ended and my mother found out from the ex-neighbours, a year or two later, that the new owners had cut the tree down to a stump. To them, it was just an apple tree. Maybe not even that. Maybe just an annoyance.
There's a tradition in my family of keeping the collars of pets when they have gone; some last tangible link to them, I guess. It was after the news of the apple tree that my mother discovered the collar had been lost in the house move. I guess she must have been looking for it specifically because of the tree.
We have our memories, but memories aren't permanent and - in some ways - are unreal. When I look at the back of my hand, that scar is real. It links me directly to the past and to that dog and to what happened that day. I'm glad to have it. It's not like a mole or a blemish or something natural. It's the mark of an event, the proof of a life, a physical sign of how we change each other, how even animals change us.