By Emily Rogal
“On the girl’s brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, ‘I survived’.”
- Chris Cleave, Little Bee
I think the first time I realized how weird bodies were, I was in 5th grade. After throwing up all over my Limited Too bean bag chair while watching an episode of Lizzie McGuire, my mom rushed me off to the hospital only for the doctors to discover that I had appendicitis. The surgery was no biggie, and in no time, I was in my own hospital room eating ice cream sans-appendix. My mom was just about to leave for the first time since the surgery for what was sure to be a five minute stint to the gift shop. Before she left, she gave me one last warning, “Emily. Do not play with the buttons on the bed.”
I rolled my eyes, secretly waiting for her to leave so that I could go wild with the amazing contraption that allowed my bed to go up and go down. Sure enough, as soon as she left, I was having the time of my life...maybe a little too much fun. My bed started to go haywire, wildly rising and falling and thrashing all around. It set off a flurry of alarms, and in no time, a team of nurses were rushing to make sure I was okay. After realizing that I was fine, and it was only me being a shit head 10-year-old, they left me alone. Thoroughly worn out from my fun (and maybe with a case of whiplash), I hobbled over to the bathroom, fueled with curiosity, and peeled up my hospital gown to reveal the bandaged site.
I pulled back the corner and saw the gash on my lower right side. It was so odd, seeing this abrasion on my skin. For the rest of my life, I knew, I would have this tiny line on my stomach. Maybe it wouldn’t be so noticeable in the future, but it would always be there. I had been marked by this event, in the literal sense. My body had become a text, and this scar was just a tiny epithet of a small yet significant event in my life...weird, right?
This week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach, amongst many other things deals with this idea of what it means to be marked by an experience. We start out with our old friend Jacob (the kind of douchey dude who stole his brother’s birthright), going to meet up with said brother, Esau, for the first time since his most recent move, stealing his father’s blessing for Esau. Needless to say, Jacob is pretty much pooping his pants in nervousness. It doesn’t make things easier when Jacob finds out that his brother “is coming to meet [him]...and there are four hundred men with him” (Genesis 32:7). Regardless, Jacob proceeds, with everything he has in tow. Like, we’re talking the whole shebang - Jacob’s got his four wives, his plethora of animals, all of his belongings, and his eleven children, and he starts sending them across the river one group at a time. And then, “Jacob was left alone” (Genesis 32:25).
I don’t know why, but this small, tiny line really intrigued me. Jacob is standing completely alone, and like, not the kind of alone that we are in the elevator where we’re checking our phones despite the obvious lack of service, but the kind of alone where you are literally on the other side, separated from everyone and everything you know. I guess that’s why it seems so cruel almost when out of literally nowhere, a man “wrestled with him until the break of dawn” (Genesis 32:25).