The latest fashion trend, if several glossy men's and women's magazines are to be believed, is scars. They're apparently very cool and now -- a fashion accessory that says, "I've been there and done that, and I've got the boo-boos to prove it." In fact, some fashionistas are such slaves to trends that they're going out and having themselves professionally "scarred." They call it body art -- as if it were on par with a piercing or a tattoo.

But this is an insult to people with real scars. Designer injuries lack the one thing that a real scar has: history. Scars tell the stories of your life. They are memories drawn -- literally -- into your skin. A scarred body is like a richly illustrated book, which only the bearer of those scars can translate.

I've found that there are three general types of scars. The first kind you get by doing: running, trying, falling, crashing, stumbling, scraping, pushing, sliding, and otherwise living life to its best and fullest, with such focus on "now" that getting hurt is only a dim concern until you're suddenly bleeding.

As the owner of numerous such scars, I've always felt a certain pride when people ask me where the hell I got that ungodly thing on my knee, shoulder, etc. Got the one on my left knee mountain biking in Moab, I proudly explain. The permanent bruise on my ankle is the result of an epic powder run in Jackson Hole. The big gash on my ass is from being attacked by a dog when I was seven. The one on my chin is from the coffee-table incident that we all seem to have at about age three.

On and on it goes, and with each retelling, I am thrust right back to the
moment of injury. I remember the way the hot, red dirt of the desert smelled; I recall the sound of the powder snow softly parting beneath my skis; I can feel the soft fur of the giant standard poodle just moments before he decided I was dinner; and I can conjure up the pure joy of running around and around the living room as fast as I could, just before I tripped. No other parts of my life are etched into my memory with as much detail as the events that are tied to my scars.

Unfortunately, the same is also true of the second type of scars, the ones that come with memories we'd prefer not to have. We bear these scars as reminders not so much of a life well lived, but of how quickly that life can be yanked away. These scars come from car accidents, operations, and illnesses. My mother's is from her double mastectomy; Michael's, from a construction accident; Ray's, from going through the windshield of his car; Cedric's, from three years' worth of cancer operations and, most recently, from having his leg amputated. With scars like these, your body is forever transformed, and though you may find them ugly or disfiguring, the fact that you have them means one thing: you are still alive to tell us where they came from. They are proof of your survival. And, for that reason, you should be proud of them as well.

And that leads us to the most insidious scars of all: the ones on the inside. The
injuries that cause these take the longest to heal, because they aren't cuts to your skin but gashes to the mind, heart, and spirit. They come from being dumped by a spouse, watching a loved one pass away, losing the things that are most precious to you. These wounds are the hardest to see, but also the most profound. Their marks don't fade over time. Instead, they
rearrange everything, leaving us yearning for the way things were before. But like all wounds, these too slowly heal, and your mind, heart, and soul rebuild around the gash, making accommodations for the damage. And you go on living, albeit with an entirely new perspective. These scars aren't reminders. They don't make you proud. They just change everything.

So which type of scar will the terror of September 11, slicing across an entire nation, leave behind? The gash is bloody and deep and feels as if it will never heal. But it will. One day, will we cherish the resulting scar as proof that we lived fully and well, and focused so much on the now that getting hurt was a dim concern until we started bleeding? Will it be the type of scar that is ugly and utterly transforming, that leaves us yearning for days gone by but stands as physical evidence that despite the trauma, we survived? Or will this scar leave us with no message, no pride, just a gash across our minds, hearts, and souls that rearranges everything forever?

This scar seems destined to be a combination of all three.

Kris Frieswick can be reached at krisf1@gte.net.

Issue Date: September 21 - 27, 2001