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On my right eyelid I had a cyst removed. Twice. The second time there were four stitches. The scar is at the edge of the lid just above the eyelashes. Even I can’t see that one unless I hold the lid closed and taut with my fingers.

My mother told me that I rode my tricycle up the front sidewalk and didn’t stop or turn when I got to the front steps. I went over the handlebars and face first into the concrete steps. I have no recollection of that incident. I don’t even remember noticing that I have a faint scar across the bridge of my nose until I was an adult and was told that story.

I think I was about ten when I fell while running in a friend’s basement. I bit all the way through my upper lip. I don’t remember getting any stitches for that, but there is a bump there that gives me a bit of a crooked smile.

On the surface everything seems right
no one notices the dimness of the light
For the world outside our door
our smiles are oh so bright
On the surface everything’s all right

When I was a senior in high school I broke my right arm and damaged the radial nerve. After six and a half weeks in a cast, the bone had healed but I needed an operation to remove scar tissue around the nerve. My largest scar is about eight inches long and 1/4 inch wide from above my right elbow up toward my shoulder.

I think it was the summer between first and second grade when I crushed the tip of my right ring finger under a rock. It bled a little and I lost the fingernail. (The nail grew back, but I remember how odd it felt to have the nail bed exposed.) There’s a little scar from the nail to the first knuckle.

We have the grace of actors on the stage
We orchestrate the moves that complement the play
But the things that we believe in
we just throw them away
On the surface everything’s okay

I don’t know. I really have no idea how I got a one inch scar near the base of my left thumb. But I have one. It’s skinny and straight and a complete mystery to me.

When I was a freshman in high school I let a bit slip when I was taking it out of a drill press after drilling a piece of steel. The hot bit burned the edge of my left palm and now I have a jagged little scar there.

We say goodnight and then we close our eyes
To drift in different worlds far from each other’s sight
Dreaming of yesterday
when we held each other tight
And on the surface everything’s all right

I was born with a herniated umbilical. There are tiny scars radiating from my belly button and slightly longer ones to the left and right. My mother told me the doctors were just going to sew straight across leaving no belly button at all but she was afraid that other kids would tease me about it when I got older. As kids do, they found other reasons to tease me….

I think I was a couple months old when I had another hernia operation. I’m not clear on the details — whether that was caused by the herniated umbilical or they both had the same cause. The scar from that one is about six inches long on the left side of my belly. Really, really low on my belly. You’d never see that one either.

What are you thinking tonight
I don’t know you (I don’t know you)
My words disappear in the night
and there’s no one there to notice
Maybe our lives will never be the same

I have a dim recollection of tearing a gash near my left knee on a loose upholstery tack. I might have been five years old or so. I don’t think I got stitches for that either, but there is a two inch scar fading away there now at any rate.

I had a large (maybe the size of a nickel) mole on the back of my right calf. It never caused me any problems, but I had it removed on the advice of a dermatologist. Hmm, the same man that removed the cysts from my eyelid. That scar is about three inches long and half an inch wide at the middle and pointed at the ends.

But we can face tomorrow
if we can just get through today
I’m holding back the tears
while you’re pushing me away
But on the surface everything’s okay
yeah on the surface everything’s okay

Until I started making this list, I never realized how battered my body is. By nearly every measure I have had a good life. And we all have little bumps and scrapes along the way. It is the wounds you cannot see though, the broken heart and betrayal, that I think shape my life far more dramatically than any external damage.

I keep most people at a distance. I am shy, but not unfriendly. For the most part, I treat people politely and with respect. But I don’t really let them in. I wonder sometimes if that means the internal wounds have never healed, that I don’t have scars there because I pick at them, keeping them open and bleeding. Why would anyone do that to themselves? The scars on my skin are harder than the surrounding area and I don’t think they have any nerve endings in them. Hard and unfeeling… maybe that old heart is scarred after all.

[On the Surface by Rosanne Cash]