Lucky Scars

I trace the thick line with the tip of my finger, tickling him while I dry him off after his bath. The line feels hard and bumpy, even though I know it’s been softened with bottle after bottle of baby lotion. The line is highlighted by tiny raised dots that give the illusion of a zipper. The remnants of a plethora of tiny staples. The upside down Y shape branding him as different.

The scar takes up the majority of his ample Buddha-belly.  It’s long since faded from the angry red of a fresh incision to that silver-white color only scar tissue can create. He pays no attention to the road-map generously  taking up residence on his belly. I see it, though, as others do, an ugly reminder of a life hanging in the balance.

The scar in and of itself is not so bad, it’s the others, the craters left behind from the drains that make you want to avert your eyes. Tubes placed, one end in the bile ducts of his donated liver, the other end outside his once tiny body, draining the bile that collected from those damaged ducts. Hope that those tubes would force those bile ducts to remain open, permanently.

Once the tubes were removed it took months for the craters to form, to heal over the holes left behind. His “extra belly buttons” is what Jonathan calls the craters in his brothers’ ravaged abdomen. 4 of them, large enough to stick the eraser end of a number 2 pencil in. A permanent connect the dot, floating around the upside down Y.

Of course, there’s more, the mass of needle jabs that congregate along his right side. Coordinates that mark the spot of repeated liver biopsies, more than I can count with both hands. So many scars on a 3 year old belly. Physically on him, emotionally mine. Each mark: a procedure, a hospital stay, a medical miracle.

Because even though his belly and its multitude of scars is the topic of hushed conversations whenever he takes off his shirt, it’s these same scars that remind me each and every day how lucky he is.  How lucky I am to have him here.

Some day I’m sure he will lament how his belly looks, how it makes him different from the other boys. How the girls laugh when they see his physique.

I will have to remind him, just how precious those scars are. I will have to re-tell the stories about how hard he fought, the endless hospital stays, how bravely he earned those scars. I will have to make him see that the constellation of scars sprinkled across his belly should be worn like a badge of honor.

I will have to convince Zachary that his scars are beautiful simply because they saved his life.

Nothing could be more beautiful than that.

This post was inspired by The Red Dress Club’s weekly writing prompt. This week’s assignment was: To write a piece about something ugly – and find the beauty in it. 600 words max.

As always, concrit is welcome, I struggled with how to end it, so suggestions are encouraged.

Lessons Learned

The room was quiet, tense breathing and pencils scratching, the only sound to be heard. As I sat there, studying my own test, I felt Krissy’s pencil tap me lightly on the shoulder.

I snuck a glance backwards, she waved the folded note in her hand and nodded towards Kristin, in front of me. I sighed. It seemed easy, just pass the note with the test answers to Kristin. I knew they were the test answers because Krissy had told us the day before that she had them. I was to pass them to Kristin when Krissy was done using them.

I could use them after Kristin, although I wasn’t much for cheating. My lack of a social life left plenty of time for studying. So all I had to do was pass the note from one girl to the other. Easy. I glanced up at the teacher, she was watching everyone intently. It would take some quick maneuvers to get the note passed.

Krissy was getting impatient, I reached my hand backwards and grabbed the note. Now all I had to do was pass it forward to Kristin.

I tapped Kristin with my pencil, she was waiting. Just as I was ready to hand her the note, “Amy, what’s that in your hand?”. Oh crap, I was caught. My heart started to race. “Please bring it to me.” Oh, oh ,oh, How was I going to get out of this one?

I got up and handed the note to the teacher. She opened it and gasped. She directed me to go sit in the hallway. As I looked back to my classmates, I saw Krissy shaking her head and Kristin looking defeated.

The teacher came out in the hallway. “I know this isn’t yours, Amy. Just tell me who’s it is and you won’t get into any trouble.”

But I will get in trouble, I thought. While I believed that Kristin and Krissy were my friends, I was petrified of the prospect of turning them in. In the hierarchy of sixth grade popularity, I was just beginning to come into my own. 

“I can’t tell you.” I manged to stammer. She looked me squarely in the eye and told me I had until the end of the day. Otherwise, she would take action.

Action? Detention wouldn’t be as bad as the alternative. I imagined the girls ganging up on me after school. Worse than the possible beating I might endure was the distinct possibility that I would become the girl who told. A stigma worse than detention. Yeah, her action couldn’t be as bad as the alternative.

Lunchtime came, Kristin and Krissy begged me not to tell. Begged, really? I was expecting death threats. I began to feel a little heady with the promise of favors and material things offered as compensation for my fall from grace. Surely a couple of detentions was worth the admiration I would garner by not telling.

The end of the day came all too quickly, the teacher cornered me before I could get to the bus. “Well?” she waited expectantly.

“I can’t tell you.” I stared at the ground, feeling both smug and anxious, waiting for her sentence.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, I thought the candidate for Student Council Secretary would do the right thing. I’ll have to take your name off the ballot, you can no longer run for Student Council.”

I felt the world turn sideways, I trudged onto the bus, tears streaming down my face. My fall from grace not the cheap thing I imagined.

This post was written in response to the weekly memoir writing prompt from The Red Dress Club. This week’s assignment was, when meeting someone for the first time, describe a scene from your life that would help show the person your true self.

As always, critiques are welcome. This event popped into my head when I first read the assignment and wouldn’t quiet down until I wrote it.

Head Down, Flip Around

Swimming had always come easy for the girl. It was really the only thing she was good at.  She loved the sensation of floating. Her chubby pre-teen body, weightless, as only one can be in a pool of azure blue.  The noises around her drowned out by the water lapping at her ears. Her hair, a medusa’s coil snaking its way around her head. She was water itself when she swam.

She could spend hours in the pool, performing mid-water somersaults. Head down, flip around, as her toes would break the surface. Head down, flip around, she used to chant to herself as she gracefully twirled head over heel. Head down, flip around, until she couldn’t hold her breath anymore and had to come up for air.

Head down, flip around, she wanted to see how many times she could somersault in her cousin’s above-ground pool. Everyone had already gone in for lunch. Head down, flip around, she kept going, even when she felt her lungs begin to burn. They had left her there, alone, knowing she was the strongest swimmer of them all.

Head down, flip around until she needed to break the surface, but couldn’t find her way up. She felt a scream reach her lips, but how do you scream underwater? Head down, flip around, she’d flipped so many times, she’d become disoriented. What if she couldn’t find her way to the surface?

Head down, flip around, her lungs felt like they were going to burst. She needed oxygen so badly, she had to fight the urge to inhale. Head down, flip around, she started to panic. She twisted corkscrew-like until she could gain purchase on the bubbles and project herself upwards. Head down, flip around, she could see the sun’s distortion above her as she twisted. The sudden streak of light guiding her way back to the surface.

With a gasp, she broke the surface, just as her mom called her in for lunch. She felt wobbly, like cooked spaghetti, her arms barely able to paddle through the water. It took all her strength to pull herself up the ladder. She sat on the step and breathed deeply, trying to shake off some of the fright. Her mom called to her again and she slowly got off the ladder and made her way inside.

Head down, flip around, she could feel the baby fluttering in her belly. The tiny bumps, almost like butterfly wings against her abdomen. Head down, flip around, she knew her baby girl was doing somersaults, graceful twists over and over and over again.

She delighted in the sensation and hadn’t yet told her husband that she could feel the baby inside her, flipping like an Olympic hopeful. Head down, flip around, suddenly she thought about that day in her cousin’s pool and wondered how she had found her way to the surface.

Head down, flip around, she coveted this time when she could feel the life inside her. She would wait, at least a few more weeks, maybe more, before she told anyone of the wing-like sensation in her belly.

Head down, flip around, she had never told anyone about that day in her cousin’s pool. The sudden streak of sunlight that had guided her upwards out of the darkness. Head down, flip around, maybe she would keep her aquatic dancer a secret as well.

Head down, flip around, she smiled as a streak of sunlight cut across her wavering belly.

Head down, flip around, maybe some things aren’t meant to be shared.

This post was written for The Red Dress Club’s weekly prompt. This week was: Water gives life. It also takes it away. Fiction or Non-fiction. 600 word limit.

Critiques are always welcome – my question to you – fiction or non-fiction?

Room 541

The room is quiet, almost zen-like in it’s tranquility. The IV pumps purr and the ventilator swooshes in and out. Occasionally, the IV pumps brazenly sound off their alarms, diiiing-doooong, indicating that their precious serums are done infusing.

The trash cans are usually overflowing with the yellow paper gowns and bright blue gloves every person must wear into the room. No matter that the cans are emptied 3 or more times per day, often I must pick up the trash that litters the wood floor. It’s an odd costume-party tradition that mandates the guests leave behind their borrowed costumes.

The tap, tap, tap of the nurses computer keyboard competes with the lessor tap tap, tap tap, tap tap of my laptop’s keyboard. Sometimes we chat in soft voices, hushed whispers that belie the fact that the babe in the enormous hospital bed might be abruptly woken up. The eclectic sound of modern hospital room jazz is more often than not, accompanied by the sound of feet shuffling softly through the room.

Barely audible over this finely orchestrated swish, hum, tap tap tap are faint piano lullabies softly filling the room with tunes such as The Itsy-Bitsy Spider, Frere Jacque and Brahms’ Lullaby. The songs have been repeated on an endless loop for 2 months straight. The black iPod settled in its matching docking station is loaded with several weeks worth of music, but these particular songs have been chosen for the peaceful atmosphere they project.

The lights are usually dimmed. The room’s only window to the world outside is small and even during the day, very little natural light seems to be able to penetrate the darkness. The wintry view of the roof-top picnic area is depressing at best and the shades are closed against the cruel tease of snow-covered picnic benches.

Across the room, ugly white and yellow curtains hang crookedly at the large sliding glass doors. They are drawn against the bright lights and the sight of the nurses station, successfully eliminating the bustle of activity outside the room.

One small work-light glows over my hard fold-out cot and the tray table that doubles as a computer desk. The other source of light glows harshly over the meticulously organized medical supplies, strategically placed away from the main attraction in the room.

He lays there on his side in the over-sized hospital bed that no small baby should be allowed to lay in. The stark whiteness of the hospital linens glow against the dusty blue of the wall he faces.

Brightly colored, hand-sewn baby quilts adorn the bottom of the bed. Changed each day, they are the only reminder that the babe is more than just a patient in this room. He is cuddled with soft fleecy blankets that help keep his diaper-clad self toasty warm.

His uber-soft black and white plush zebra is snuggled between his outstretched arms.  Each arm has a single IV catheter.  Somehow multiple medications are pumped simultaneously into him through the jumbled string of IV tubing connected to those whirling pumps. Those pumps that keep his life-force flowing through him.

But even the breathing tube and the spaghetti of IV’s can’t hide the chubby cheeks and pudgy hands. In fact if you could just ignore the tangle of tubes and the wires monitoring his vital signs, he’d appear to be like any other eight-month old baby taking a nap…..

In the five months that I stayed in the Hospital with David, we had several different rooms. While my favorite was the big sunny room in the corner, Room 541 was the last one we called home. This room wasn’t as big or as sunny as the previous room they moved us out of, but it was cozy and we made the best of it.

This post was written for The Red Dress Club’s Weekly Memoir Writing Prompt. This week’s exercise:

Think of a room from your past.  It can be any type of room at all.
Take a mental picture of that room.

What happened there?  What is it like?  What is the atmosphere there?  What are the smells, the sounds, the sights?  How does it feel?

Now reveal that snapshot to your reader.

Take us to that room.

And try to do it in 750 words or less.

Critiques are always welcomed.

Whine for Sale – Cheap

For a short time, I’m offering up several cases of whine. I’ve been  bottling my own for years and I have way more than I can use. I’ve tried giving it away to friends and family, but I always acquire more at these large family functions than I can possibly swallow.

My cellar is filling up at an alarming rate. I seem to be bottling fresh whine on a daily basis. Time to clear out the old and make way for the new. No reasonable offer will be refused. All of these vintages would make great gifts for your single friends.

Included in this lot are:

The 8 year old whine. This vintage is sweet at first sip, but the bouquet is a little surly around the edges. You might find that this one leaves a bitter taste in your mouth if you partake in too much. While it goes well with chicken nuggets and french fries, keep it away from anything made with soy sauce. Makes a nice going away gift.

I also have an abundant supply of 6 year old whine. This vintage is full-bodied and has a definite salty undertone to it. Since this vintage is not quite as mellow as the 8 year old, and it can pack quite a wallop even if consumed in small quantities. You may need the aspirin before you imbibe. It’s a vintage that goes well with pizza and ramen noodles, but is absolutely ghastly when paired with vegetables of any kind. A nice vintage to share with folks you don’t know very well.

And last but not least is the not so innocent 3 year old whine. In fact, this vintage isn’t even bottled, I put it straight into the boxes. And while this whine looks all light and sparkly, trust me, it’s pure moonshine. This vintage goes well with just about anything, but I would advise using plastic cups as this whine has been known to shatter glass. These boxes of whine are perfect for college dorm parties.

It’s best not to mix and match these vintages, stick with one and you’re sure to have a pleasant evening. Mix them together and you’ll need a designated driver.

On the plus side,  with a little bit of elbow grease and a scrub brush you could use these whines to remove rust. Hell, I’ll even include the kids for an extra $50.

The post is based on a prompt from The Red Dress Club via  Absolute Write.

We want you to imagine you’ve just had a fight with a friend, a co-worker, husband, significant other, child – you get the picture. You’re mad. It’s time for revenge.

What would you sell?

Write a humorous listing for eBay or Craig’s List. Talk about the history of the items, why they must go.

Word limit is 600.