I might have a black thumb in the raised beds that surround my sunny yard, but take a close look at my skin and you can revel in a garden of delights.
The best things my body ever grew were my kids, but these days I have moved on from human gestation to growing unnamable things. I have the typical skin tabs and small calcium deposits that every self respecting woman sports. I also have moles and blood filled three dimensional dots, these are less common but still in the repertoire of reality. A step less appetizing are my flat lying and flapping brown bits. There is an adage in planting that says “the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps and the third year it leaps.” Wow have I leapt since the years of my youth.
I have a punch card to the dermatologist.
As she peers as my naked self she names things in Latin. What I call a dot she calls a multisyllabic symptom of hormonal imbalance. On it goes, I sport perennials and annuals from hairline to armpit to underboob. She touches and names them all. Then dismisses them with a shrug. Nothing to worry about she says pulling off her gardening gloves. She seems a little disappointed that I don’t have anything particularly spectacular, but still impressed my the mere multitude of my marks.
Generally growth is considered a good thing, meditation, yoga, therapy journaling catalyze personal growth. But personal growths? That’s a bit different.
I have ignored almost all of my epidermal friends in the past just as she expects me to. I think of them as constellations, unfathomable and ever growing. Once I grew a blueberry that grew into a grape that then grew its own blueberry. I called it “my thing” and thought of it as the sister I never had. When I felt really alone I would talk to her. One day by the pool a ten year old friend of my son tried to pick her off my back thinking she was fruit from our snack. I’m not sure which of the three of us was most mortified, but that was the end of her.
Today I am battling back, prone, waiting to be cut and cauterized. My dermatologist is suited up with gloves and glasses and drapes and shears. In the brightly lit office she leans between my legs the way only a select few have in the past. She oohs and sighs. Things are very interesting down there. Much more interesting than I want.
A few moments and it is over.
Except of course it is never over. Once you start growing things you never stop. So I will keep most of them, my stars and sisters and have my kids connect the dots. Gardens aren’t for everyone. Yet they seem to be for me.
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