Does it matter?

A couple weeks ago, Sally rushed into the house with a roar of MOM that was half-way between mad and hurt. At least it sounded mad a bit, but turned out to be all hurt, and a baby cub’s aggressive appeal for comfort. She had fallen off her bike on the way home from school and busted up her chin. I gave her sympathy, hugs, ice, and decided after a couple minutes that I was glad I’d showered that day because a trip to Insta-care was in our immediate future.

Sally got scared when I mentioned stitches. Years ago, when she was our only child, Mr. Bennet and I taught her to say please before she took her medicine or got a shot, on the theory that she’d view them as desirable if she had to ask for them politely. Sometime in her seventh year she wised up and regressed, shaking and crying (quietly, which is even worse in these situations) before any traumatic medical intervention.

I said it wasn’t a very deep cut, but since it was on her face, she’d probably want stitches so there wouldn’t be a scar. And she asked me, “Does it matter?”

I know part of that was her fear of pain, but a good part of it was her really asking if scars matter, and I am still trying to think up a good answer for her.

It would take all of my fingers and all of my toes to count up the small scars on my body: on my shoulder from two surgeries, my hands from cooking and carelessness and living, my forehead and knee from chicken pox, my abdomen from appendicitis, my shin from the time Rory chased me on the bleachers in high school.

Does it matter?

Last week was our first time to drive Susan’s preschool carpool. We pulled up to her friend’s house and his mother said for us to go ahead, she wasn’t done doing his hair yet. At my blank look she reminded me that it was picture day. I looked at Susan, with her bedhead hair for afternoon preschool, and the outfit she’d put on: blue shirt under a pink and green plaid jumper. And I shrugged, half-rueful, half-proud.

When Sally turned eight I asked if she’d like to get her ears pierced; at first she wasn’t interested at all, and I didn’t push, but several months later when it came up again, she asked if it hurts. I said it did a little, but not bad at all, and she asked for clip-on earrings. Those pinched, and now she is thinking it over, or would be, if she hadn’t already forgotten all about it.

Then yesterday I noticed something odd in the laundry. Sally’s pants, bought over the summer on several trips to DI do not have holes in the knees. I lamented for years over the holes in Sally’s pants, not that she was active enough to rip them, but that pants are expensive. Three wearings from Sally the Horse or Sally the Cheetah, and even the nicest jeans from the Gap (a gift) were shredded at the knees.

Now her pants are un-holey. A bit grass-stained and stretched out at the knee, but not holey anymore.

So to answer your question, Sally, three weeks and four stitches later: Scars don’t matter, and if you need to get holes in your pants to play the way you want to play, please do.