Three summers ago, when my daughters were four and two, we brought them to the shores of Lake Sakakawea to take a boat ride and get an ice cream cone at the marina. I was only a couple months or so post-surgery to remove the tumor that had been blocking a large part of my airway, the one that sliced me right down the middle and left me with three scars where the tubes went and one big one that, for a while, and at that time when it was fresh, resembled a zipper, nice and straight starting at my clavicle and running all the way down my sternum.

I like to think now, from far away, it makes me look like I have the cleavage God never gifted me, but I digress…

Anyway, at that time I wanted to do anything and everything that got me out of the house and distracted from the pain of healing up and the worry and fear that would cling to the back of my throat if I laid too still or it got too quiet. Not that it was ever quiet those days with two daughters young and healthy and growing in the summer sun, a blessing that would keep me out of my head and into their latest art project or wild thing they were attempting to catch. So that hot day we all put on our swimming suits under our shorts and summer dresses and headed out to do what normal families do when they don’t have a mom recovering from major surgery and are spared, at least for now, the black cloud of cancer or loss, as if any breathing adult is walking around completely free from burdens.  As if being a human isn’t knowing what could happen, what inevitably is going to happen, and mowing the lawn or ordering the cocktail or training for the race despite it or because of it, depending on the day. Depending on the outlook.

The girls swam and made sandcastles and swatted away the horseflies and we probably ate the sandwiches my husband made or maybe we made the decision to just grab a cheeseburger at the marina restaurant, what we all wanted to do in the first place. Truth is, I don’t remember the exact details of the day. I don’t remember what my daughters’ swimsuits looked like or even the little nuances we swore we’d never forget, like all the words two-year-old Rosie mis-pronounced or the soft pudge of their toddler cheeks under my smooches, but I do remember I couldn’t lift them then, so they would hold my hand and ask me when. And I do remember they would want to see that scar, to face it, to know about it, even when it was fresh and scabbed and weird and new. And they were young, and I was their mom and while I only had a few years of this parenting thing under my hat, I understood quickly that if I wasn’t scared, then they weren’t scared and so I wore that swimming suit and put on the sunscreen and lived in the world with my big new scar and that was it. This was a part of us now.

I have a point to make here and I get to it more quickly when I tell this story on stagewhen it’s my mission to argue that our failures and imperfections, our bumps and bruises and struggles aren’t for hiding, but for acknowledging, and here’s why. From across the yard of that marina, while I was standing up by the picnic tables to help situate my daughters, a man waved at me and yelled “Hey!” I looked up thinking that I knew him, but I didn’t know him, and so I just yelled “hey” back because we’re friendly here. And then he pointed to his chest and loudly asked (because he was across the yard) “Heart surgery!?”

“No!” I replied, understanding in a few beats, what he was asking. “Tumor!” I yelled back, suddenly and weirdly feeling a little proud that a stranger noticed and acknowledged the very thing that had been running and disrupting my life for months and months.

“Oh, heart surgery here!” he yelled back, pointing again to his chest before giving me a wave and getting back to living a life he was given thanks to that scar under his shirt.

Once, right after my surgery and before this stranger and I nonchalantly hollered at each other about the most terrifying time in our lives, I had a woman ask me why I didn’t hide my scar. She said her husband had one too, but she buttons his shirts up to the top for him if he forgets. She’s embarrassed? Maybe. Or maybe it just reminds her how scared she can be. 

I told her I wear it for all the people who would have given anything to wear this scar if it meant they had one more day here with their kids, or in their garden or on their boat fishing the rocky shores and stopping in the marina to grab a bucket of minnows and a candy bar. It never occurred to me to hide it, but her question made me wonder why, really. The exchange with the stranger on the edge of that lake that had me proudly declaring the imperfection to him and my daughters and anyone withing yelling range, solidified the reason—if you allow yourself to be truly seen, scars and all, others see themselves in you. I argue the act brings with it more hope and acceptance and love than anything else we can do for one another, and that can make all the difference in the healing part.

And also, sometimes, those imperfections can make you look like you have cleavage, at least maybe, from far away…if you squint…