I’ve been thinking a lot lately about scars.  Perhaps the first thing that comes to mind are visible markings on the body left behind by some accident.  I remember as a kid asking my father about the wicked scar I’d noticed one time on his chest.  During the eight years he fought in Korea he had seen hand-to-hand combat, and it had come from a bayonet.  “COOL!!!”  I exclaimed.  “Did you kill people?!”  I will never forget the shadow that fell across my father’s face.  Always such a gentle soul, I vividly recall him taking me by the upper arms and admonishing me.  “Honey,” he said, “war is a terrible thing.  It is either kill or be killed.”  I would discover many years later at my father’s funeral that he never lost a man on night patrol.  And the men who revered him (who were alive because of him) had never forgotten.  My father was a proud yet humble man.  He did not speak much of the the time he served in America’s “Forgotten War.”  For one thing, it upset my mother greatly.  Eventually I came to understand, as high school sweethearts, just how much she suffered as well during all those years my father was away.  Waiting faithfully for him, she did not marry anyone else, despite pressure from her family to do so.  While my father may have born visible scars, I realized my mother carried invisible ones that ran just as deep.  I know people today who have very painful scars as adults from their parents’ divorce when they were children.  Sometimes these scars can fester and even grow, like if their parents’ marriage (in the Protestant Church) was annulled for the sake of a parent wanting to participate in the Catholic church.  They feel that, along with their offspring, they have been bastardized, and it remains hurtful beyond words.  The scar you see pictured has caused me no small degree of embarrassment.  I cannot recall if I have written previously about it or not so here goes:  I got new roller skates last year in anticipation of my little girls’ seventh “70’s” birthday party.  It turns out the wheels were set way too slow and I fell.  I figured they were just much more slick.  At any rate, when I broke my fall I knew immediately I’d broken my left wrist as well.  At the age of 46 I discovered I would not properly recover without surgery, a steel plate, and set of screws.  This was a great source of humiliation for me.  I wasn’t some lame old lady who fell trying to roller skate:  I was the cool mom who could spin and skate backwards with ease.  The biggest blow to my pride was in having this young man (age give-away just by that statement alone) help wheel me off the floor.  I say without arrogance I have always been cool, so this was particularly painful both mentally and physically.  On Valentine’s Day of this year I started playing tennis.  I have always worn my watch on my left wrist, but I discovered an app which shows how many shots I’ve played after each game.  It breaks down the percentage of forehand, backhand, volleyed, served, etc.  Since I hit with my right I had to wear my Apple Watch on the right and I decided to just leave it on that side.  Surprisingly, it took no time to adjust.  However, now I found the scar on my left wrist was vulnerable and exposed.  When I noticed people saw the underside of my arm I found myself hastily joking that I did not attempt to kill myself.  And then I started to wonder what of those who had?  I used to gaze upon my fair, red-haired mother silently aghast at how freckled her arms were.  Half French and half Irish, she’d earned all those spots by taking me to swim lessons each summer.  Never imagining I would one day look the same, given how deeply tan I was as a mixed-race child, I now find myself sporting a million freckles dotting my arms just like her.  As I have learned time and again, life is cyclical; my freckles appeared while being in the sun watching my own little girl learning how to swim.  Whereas I was horrified by the notion as a child, I have come to at least accept them as an adult.  Just the other day my little one said to me she did not want to wind up with all my freckles and I just chuckled.  “I said the same thing to my mother.  You will,” I declared with an air of certainty.  What I also know is that one day she will come to understand what those “scars” mean — and she will not be ashamed to have them.  The late American writer and publisher Elbert Hubbard once said, “God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars.”  Scars suggest a life lived; some bear them outwardly; many bear them inwardly.  My mother wisely once said you never know what someone else has been through, and my father taught me never to assume.  So, dear readers, I urge you — do not judge someone solely based upon what you may see.  You never know where they may carry their scars.