Stretch Marks
For years, the site of stretch marks was something to hide. Pull the pants up high. Stretch the shirt down low. Lights off! Clothes on? My stretch marks have me painted like a zebra.
What's funny is, I've seen much worse. I've seen stomachs that looked like raisins, and butts and legs that looks like maps, but it only matters when it belongs to you.
Rub, rub, rub, with that cocoa butter and try to prevent that skin from spreading apart, knowing that even if you soaked in a cocoa butter bath, those stretch marks will appear if they are so destined. Searching for products to make them not only "fade" but completely disappear into oblivion. $30? $50? $100. I wonder if the "surgery" for removal works on Black folk? Lord knows I don't want to trade these stripes for knife wounds.
I remember seeing Jada Pinkett on the cover of some magazine many years ago. The photo revealed her middrift and I could see light patterns on her abdomen.
How disgusting! my mother exclaimed...and I seconded her opinion.
Diagnosis stretch marks was like terminal illness. Once you had them, it was over. All those miracle treatments at the end of magazines and on the internet, were confirmed by the friends of friends, to be unworthy.
Not every mother gets these stretch marks--some escape the sentence. Some get their sentences delayed, only to have to serve time later on. There are even those who get them, and they are not, nor ever will they be, mothers.
I stood in front of the mirror for the first time today and realized that these stretch marks are not my wounds--they are evidence of being...a mother.
Ever notice how your own child[ren], or even other children, gravitate toward your belly? Hands on it. Head on it. Lips on it. Arms and legs around it. Climbing. Lying. Mashing. Playing with toys on it. Noticing the shape, the texture, the patterns, colors, and yet unconcerned.
What does this belly signify for a child? The center of their being, perhaps. Once, their entire universe.
I wasn't in a battle. No war was fought. I brought life.
