Continents and Emotions

 For as long as I remember it’s been there, the tiny half darkened birthmark shaped like South America on the inside of my thigh. Growing up I’d always seen it but never paid much attention to it until one day in English class my junior year of high school we played an ice-breaker game. The “Getting to Know You” game seemed a little ridiculous since our high school was small (there were only 96 kids in our graduating class) and we pretty much knew everything about one another.

We played along in class, though, sharing things about ourselves that might be a surprise to at least someone. I was half-heartedly listening as a I doodled on the light blue canvas cover of my notebook until Tiffanie Murray piped up. Through a bright smile and from under a curly mop of blonde hair I heard, “Something everybody doesn’t know about me is…. I have a birthmark on the inside of my thigh in the shape of Australia.”

My head snapped up from my scribbles and I joined in with classmates to encourage her to show us where she claimed it to be at the hem of her skirt. Tiffanie awkwardly twisted her leg and shuffled up and down the rows of desks to show off her body’s recognizable speck of Australia.

“You’re never going to believe this,” I said, grabbing her arm as she approached my seat. “I have a birthmark in the shape of South America in the same place!” lifting the hem of my skirt and twisting my own leg toward her as proof. Our eyes met in true delight. “We’re birthmark twins!” Tiffanie happily exclaimed. We held each other’s astonished gazes for a moment before she moved on to shuffle through the next row.

Now, as I sit curled up in an overstuffed chair on a summer evening, feet propped up after children are put to bed and dishes are washed, I notice a smattering of bodily landmarks on my legs—a roadmap of broken blood vessels from carrying two children inside of me, a piece of pencil lead accidentally jabbed into my skin that hasn’t worked its way out yet, a patchwork of freckles from too much time in the sun. And my South America birthmark. It’s till there. A tiny, unnoticeable anchor in all that I’ve seen and done and all there is yet to delight in.