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My birthmark. That is what my mother called the little brown spot sitting in my part about three inches above my hairline. The one in the middle of my left cheek was a beauty mark. The smattering of light brown dots across my nose were freckles. They had clear terms with specific locations, part of a greater nomenclature. I knew the location of each and every one.
Today, my body is no longer a smattering of small freckles, beauty, and birthmarks. The canvas of my epidermis has been struck with a scourge of melanin concentrated skin blemishes that arrive unbidden, seemingly overnight. They pop up with the speed of a pubescent zit, except permanent. It is not a hormonal change that has caused this pestilence to strike my human rind, but the simple and unavoidable act of aging. And while I am OK with aging, I am less than OK with all the moles.
I didn’t have any point of view on my own moles growing up. I do, however, remember having a very specific distaste for Cindy Crawford. More specifically, I didn’t like her mole.
I don’t know why. My opinion was as ridiculous as it was irrational. When a kid in my 5th-grade class told me how hot he thought Cindy Crawford was I couldn’t understand. To me, that famous mole above the corner of her lip wasn’t a cute little accent on her perfect bone structure, it was a flaw. An errant brush stroke. The dent in a can of soup I picked off the shelf and handed to my mother only to have her respond:
Do you want me to get botulism?!
I didn’t know what botulism was at that age. I certainly didn’t know in 10 years people would start injecting it into their faces to appear young.
But the mole. The mole was not for me.
Perhaps I jinxed myself. My unfounded and outward distaste bringing on a mini-plague of moles I am currently in the middle of with no end in sight.
My first trip to the dermatologist when I was 18 revealed I possessed far more moles than I was aware of. Like a professional polka dot inspector, this smooth-handed stranger hovered her hands just off the surface of my body like some sort of skin shaman trying to divine the location of every irregularity, questioning me about each one I hadn’t known existed.
And then came college in Arizona with its 330 days of sunshine every year. I wasn’t a sun worshipper by any means, I have never been. I always wore my daily SPF face lotion. But even that was no match for an unceasing amount of sun I couldn’t help but be exposed to. I didn’t understand how much sun exposure affected the body on a cellular level. It wasn’t until after I graduated that a platoon of time release moles started to show up on my body, not just on my face or arms, but everywhere.
I mean, everywhere. Even in my bathing suit area.
I began yearly visits to a new dermatologist. “Watch these shapes,” she said. “Mind the irregularities and the discoloration.” It seemed doable. How fast could moles grow or change?
Quite fast apparently.
I would have thought sitting at a computer all day with my arms in front of me would make such noticing easy. But no, they just appear. Popping up like surprise text messages from a blocked number to let me know I am aging, decaying. Yesterday I was a C+ Ben Affleck stand-in, tomorrow… I’m Abe Vigoda.
Vanity is a strange trait, one we are not necessarily capable of noticing in ourselves. While we may obsess over our looks when we are young, we generally don’t appreciate them. The health of our skin, the thickness of our hair, we do not realize when our body is at its best. We do not understand we will degrade as we get older, at which point we will miss the days when everything just kind of… worked.
Aside from my rapidly greying hair, moles are the most obvious indicator of my body’s passage through time. That passage is most apparent in a well-lit hotel bathroom. It is there where the changes that have been occurring gradually are brought to a literal light. As opposed to the dimly lit hobbit latrine in my apartment where I have to squat to see the top of my head in the strangely shaped mirror. The singular bulb above the medicine cabinet sheds just enough light to alert me to any gross anomalies while keeping the nuances of my edifice a mystery.
I barely know what I look like most of the time.
So when I get to the fluorescent operating room that is a hotel bathroom, with a full-size mirror, I notice it all, not just the moles but the rogue ear and nose hairs which seem on an unstoppable march. They are a military force with unlimited supplies. Tiny self-sustaining chia pets with big dreams. Hotel bathrooms are extremely informative. That information can be alarming. Like being given the original version of a redacted government document.
All of this had been left out? Good god, what else don’t I know?
And this will seem like a joke but as I’m writing this a song called “Growing Old Is Getting Old” is playing on Spotify.
Surely it is no coincidence. Apparently, 300 million Americans have moles. Which makes me wonder, what about the other 25 million? Who are these un-tarnished individuals? How did they end up without the same indicators as the rest of us? Are they part of a separate evolution? Plain-Belly Sneetches building their own society?
I wonder if they even know they exist. My guess is they do not.
I’m hopefully only a small portion of the way into what will be a long, fulfilling, and most likely, moley life. They are great indicators, these moles. They remind me I am always changing and have less control than I might hope for. They remind me what a waste of time and energy vanity is.
I’m not sure I am at peace with these moles. They just keep coming and I must accept them as such. But you can bet I will mind them. Oh, I will mind their irregularities and discoloration. And as soon as one warrants removal…
It’s gone!
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