Danny Gregory on The Marks We Keep

Danny Gregory writes about the events that befall us, and the marks they leave:

Each of mine began as a kind of catastrophe — a crash, a fall, a diagnosis, a shock whenever I bit down hard. Each felt, in its moment, outsized and defining.

But time works a quiet magic: the pain retreats, the swelling fades, the drama becomes dinner party conversation.

Now they’re not catastrophes. They’re bookmarks. Chapter titles. Some I share easily — “this one’s from when I was in college” — others I keep for myself. They’re proof of what I’ve been through, not barriers to who I can be next.

I have a scar on my left index finger from where the saw slipped while Dad was showing me how to cut up the pieces of the barn board in the back yard, remnants left by the previous owner, who’d bought a barn at auction.

There are three tiny scars on my belly, marks that show where Dr. Fleming removed my gallbladder.

And now, here in the fracture clinic, I’ve just had the dressing removed on my radial head replacement surgery incision, and can see the mark I’ll carry forward from that, a four inch wound—well healed, it seems—around the circumference of my elbow.