Story by Terri McPherson
My six-year-old granddaughter, Caitlynd, discovered a small freckle on her upper left arm and tried to scratch it off. When I asked her what she was doing, she burst out crying, “I have a thing on my arm and I can’t get if off.”
“Oh sweetheart,” I replied, scooping her up in my arms. “That’s a beauty mark. Don’t pick at it. You’re making your skin all red and it’s going to be sore.”
She stopped crying long enough to take another look at it. “It’s not a beauty mark. It’s weird and I want it off,” she replied with a huff and another outburst of tears.
I dried her tears and rocked her and did what Grammy’s often do, fly by the seat of their pants and hope they sound wise. “Each of us are born with special marks. Some of them can be seen and some of them are invisible.”
“What kind of mark is invisible?” she asked.
“Well…. a mark of kindness, a mark of generosity, even the mark of a loving heart. We can’t see them, but they are all very special marks.”
“Why can’t mine all be invisible? I don’t want one you can see,” she said, sounding very put out.
“I can see many of your special marks. Not just that one. The color of your eyes, the shape of your nose, the sound of your laughter. Nobody else in the whole world has those exact things. Only you. Special marks, inside and out, are the things that make each of us different and special people.”
She didn’t buy my explanation completely, but she stopped worrying about her ‘beauty mark’ for the moment and promised to stop scratching at it. She jumped of my lap, pulled the book ‘Pinocchio’ out of her overnight bag and asked me to read it to her.
The next morning, Caitlynd came running into the kitchen. “I LIKE my beauty mark Grammy!” I was delighted by her change of heart and relished the feeling of having a ‘proud Grammy’ moment. She jumped into my husband’s lap. “I have a beauty mark Papa. Want to see it?”
“I sure do,” my husband laughed.
“I didn’t like it before, but now I do.”
“Grammy told me how sad you were when you found your beauty mark. What changed your mind?” my husband asked, giving me a wink.
“I had a dream that I was telling a whole bunch of lies and every time I told a lie my beauty mark would grow. And it growed and growed and growed all the way down to the ground and I stepped on it by accident and it hurt really bad and Grammy said, “I told you not to pick at it”.”
Ousted by a little wooden puppet!
My puffed-up ‘Grammy moment’ disappeared and a kitchen full of laughter took its place.
