About Blood

It never bothered me, until it did. Her scar wrecked me.

Today’s post is not from 3600 Hours. Instead I wrote from the images of Edna’s open heart surgery.

She is well. We are healed, healing, safe. This happened months ago, but I was surprised by the way it bubbled up and out of me early Monday morning. Subconsciously I wanted to join in on Jami Attenberg for her 1000 Words in May. I missed the official start, but perhaps the wave of collective writing reached me anyway and I am now committed.

I plan to share some of the pieces - the ones worth sharing - as well as digging into them more deeply. 3600 Hours stories will still be here, I’m just opening up a bit on what needs/wants to be written for my free subscribers. Paid subscribers will still receive all the BTS goodness of the making of the book.

As always - thank you for being here and reading my words.

I’ve never had a problem seeing blood. It never gave cause for wooziness or even fear. Blood was beautiful and tasted of iron. I understood some of it was blue but when exposed all became red, even redder than my hair.

—-

My grandmother lived in a beautiful home. Daisies lined the length of her driveway. Bees covered those daisies and made me afraid, but I couldn’t stay away from their little yellow and white faces. I wanted to hear what they were saying. The bee flew high and up into my face. It’s little fuzzy body hit my cheek. Terrified I spun to get away and tripped landing hard on both my knees. Grandma’s driveway was hard black pavement covered in endless tiny bits of black gravel. I felt the gravel roll across my delicate skin tearing and slashing, revealing beautiful red blood. Grandma scooped me up.

On her bathroom counter she washed my knees gently. The little black beads falling at her gentle touch. How the things stung and stung with each pulse of my heartbeat. How strange to see what was supposed to be inside me come outside. It oozed from one knee but not the other. Grandma said it was because one was cut deeper than the other. I liked the metallic smell and my grandmother’s tender attention.

She soaked the cotton ball in peroxide and gently dabbed each wound. She told me it was called a scraped knee and she was sorry I was hurt. All cleaned up she kissed me and walked me back to my father’s car. We drove home. I watched as the little bandaids on each knee turned red until the bleeding stopped

—-

You shouldn’t pick those. The little boy told me while sitting on the rug. It isn’t good to pick a scab. You’ll make it bleed again. I just looked into his big ugly face until he went away. But it was so itchy, I thought. The brown crude thing on my knee wouldn’t leave me alone. Besides I didn’t like the color it had become. It hurt to peel it away. I picked only its edges, a bit of fresh blood oozed from underneath. I quickly pushed the scab back down. I didn’t want my mother to be mad.

—

She ran to me. It was her knee. Small and perfect streaming with blood. She landed in my arms. We rocked back and forth. What was it her eyes said. What has happened to me? It was so red and so soft all at once this new little hurt. I folded her into my lap. I dabbed it softly.

It means you’ve been brave, I told her. It means you tried something! You are adventurous.

She smiled turning away. Her scraped knee meant something. It was a scar of achievement.

I didn’t have a bandaid to hold the blood, but she didn’t mind. Her own hero she marched back to play.

—-

I turned the corner, shielding my head with my knees. I’d run. Her cries filled my chest and exploded in my head. My eyes black, my head spinning.Crumpled on the floor I was paralyzed. My breath shook, my sweat cold. I’d never felt fear like this.

She’d had open heart surgery. Her incision wasn’t healing, in fact it was infected and swollen with puss. He, her physician father, was draining it. Blood and green oozed from my baby’s chest and I fled. I squeezed my eyes shut but all I could see was the deep crevice splitting and bleeding open and blood spreading across her chest. The flesh so deep, the blood so red. The scar opened wide. I didn’t know where I was. I couldn’t comfort her. The fear in her voice, my husband’s cursing. It was all happening on the counter of my bathroom. I could do nothing.

I’ve often watched the last leaves of dead or dormant trees cling to their branch. Unyielding bark, the curled brittle lifeless leaf twitching with the wind. Hold me! Keep me! Don’t let me fall! Their tiny shrill voices seem to call, but the unyielding mother branch never speaks back. Too weak the leaf finally breaks and is carried away.

There is a fable of a dying girl watching such a leaf. She’s ready to die when the last leaf falls. Her frail grandfather risks his life and paints a leaf. He dies from the effort. She lives.

Cradled there on the floor outside the bathroom where my daughter and husband struggle to remove the poison filling her chest I crumble in on myself. Tossed in the wind I cling to nothing. All I see is red. All I smell is metallic.

Finished, he wraps her in a blanket covering her fresh and angry wound. I hold her weeping softly. Arms around bodies so fragile and filled with beautiful red blood. We are these things too fragile to bleed or weep or suffer. These were not the adventurous brave badges of courage. These are the deep disparaging wounds we cannot control. In vain I wish they were painted things instead of mortal fleshy things.

Blood should not be seen. Its sacred scarlet red should remain secret, inside where it belongs.

—--

It stains her shirt. My sheets. My towels. Rusty red of dried crusty seepage. Brown and delicious because it means healing. Because it means old. Because it means passive, progression, safety. Old, tired yielding and less. It is an ugly color but I do not peel or pick to find the beautiful scarlet red. I do not wish for richness of color but earnestly wait for the day when it is nothing but a pink stretchy scar. A sacred seal, the keeper of all that color

---

Thank you for reading.

I hope something stays with you into your day or even longer.

If you’re curious, I am creating my first photobook and writing about it for paid subscribers - you can preview the paid posts here.

And if not that’s great too. I hope I write something that turns over and over for you. I hope you see someone different from you out in the wild and you pause to think on it a little differently.