“Lakeside Review”
May 21st, 1982
My friend often hides her hands. At church, she folds them neatly in her lap beneath the vinyl edges of an oversized purse. At home, she sinks them deep into the generous pockets that all her clothing seems to have. In winter, she usually wears mittens.
“Why do you do it?” I asked her in a moment of sharing, when we both seemed willing to risk.
She spread her long squared-off fingers like a fan before my face. “Because they're so big,” she said. “Just look…”
I did look. Funny how I'd never noticed the slight disproportion between those well-scrubbed knuckles and the fawn-like delicacy of her face. It was her expressive eyes that had always seemed large to me.
I guess we've all got our vulnerable spot--a sort of cosmetic Achilles heel we seek to camouflage against unsuspecting eyes lest they widen to our sense of imperfection.
To others, these so-called “flaws” that preserve us from plainness usually go unnoticed. But, somehow, from our own perspective, such anomalies grow in direct proportion to our shrinking self-esteem.
Once as a young girl, I heard a dentist tell my mother how beautiful my teeth were, despite a “slight overbite.” Forever after that, my incisors felt enormous. Whenever I met anyone I wanted to impress, my mouth would get so dry I could hardly close my lips!
A beautiful, dark-haired college girl, I once knew, complained about her funny toes, and someone else--a handsome, athletic fellow with biceps like Superman’s, always combed his hair over what he called his ragged ears.
My own daughter would put lemon juice on her freckles, if I'd let her. But when the sunny rays of summer spatter tawny dapples on the porcelain primness of her nose, I see the gold that shimmers in her hair…
