It’s good to be back!  For the last year, I’ve been writing more for my mother than my daughter over at CaringBridge (FYI — she’s doing great!).

But Addy’s EBC speech (below) brought me back here, and I’ve been wanting to share a sweet story with you from a recent outing.

Keith and I were walking with the kids through a Macy’s department store one afternoon.  We move slowly as a herd, and passing all the shiny things in the jewelry department slowed us down even more.  With plenty of time to glance around at the other patrons, I saw a woman standing with her husband at the jewelry counter.  As she turned her head back and forth in conversation between her husband and the employee helping them, I noticed a big, dark, red splotch on the front of her face.

I stared, like any good 5-year-old would do, but tried to be at least a little bit discreet while I determined if it was a birthmark or a burn scar or something else.  With each mark being so personalized & unique, it can be hard to identify from a distance; you just know there’s something big there.

She didn’t notice me staring, thank goodness, but I quickly realized that it was because she had locked in on Addy.  She was staring at Addy.

I nudged Addy to get her attention from the shiny things for a second, turned her toward me, and whispered excitedly, “Don’t turn and stare, but I’m pretty sure there’s a lady over there with the exact same stain you have.”

Whenever we encounter someone else with a unique feature, like the darkness of a birthmark, the baldness of alopecia, the stature of dwarfism, or the gap of a missing limb, I treat it like a celebrity sighting.  It’s all in the attitude – a combo of “Ohmygoodness they have something super-unique too!  Agh!” and “Be cool, be cool.”  With that, my children have learned that people who ‘stick out’ (like celebrities, or Addy) are totally positively awesome, and that they might (like a celebrity) not want to be disturbed.  With small children, one can never teach too much discretion.

So when I told Addy there was another person just like her nearby, her eyes got big and excited and she got twitchy as she itched to turn and look but knew better.  She stage-whispered, “Where?”  “Behind you.”  Addy turned naturally as if to look at more jewelry, glanced at the woman discreetly, then played it cool, turning to me, “It’s even on the same side!”

I got the impression that the same thing was happening between the couple buying jewelry.  I thought about introducing ourselves, but hesitated; this woman was a bit older than I was, which means she had grown up before the unique-is-awesome attitude pervaded the culture as widely as it has by now.  People from Generation X and earlier don’t always have good memories of growing up with their unique feature; some came from families that never spoke of the birthmark at all.  They’ve made reluctant peace with it, but they’re sick of being noticed in public; in their experience, being noticed isn’t a good thing.

There wasn’t much time to think about it, though, because the next thing I knew, the woman was leaving her bag with her husband and walking toward us.  I turned expectantly, as if we were going to engage in the usual polite grown-up introductions, but she walked right by me and, without saying a word, engulfed my daughter in a bear hug.

Addy hugged her right back.  They stayed there for a long, long moment, and I heard this stranger speak quietly into Addy’s hair: “You are so beautiful.  You are so beautiful.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.  You are so beautiful.”

And that’s how we met.  After detangling from Addy, the woman said to us, “I’m so excited!  I mean, I often see other birthmarks, but it’s really rare to see someone with a stain, just like mine, on the right side!”  We talked about how pretty it is, the way it ‘sweeps’ up to the hairline.  Addy told her proudly that she’s had forty-something surgeries, and the woman nodded: “I had thirty-seven.”  I just about fell over – this woman’s stain was really dark!  These two birthmarks were similar even in their resistance to treatment.  “Keep zapping!” she encouraged.  Addy told her about having a tube down her eye, and getting checked for glaucoma, and the woman nodded, “Yep! Me too.”

I’m so grateful that this woman came over.  I’m grateful for her confidence.  I’m grateful for her willingness to bear-hug a stranger’s kid.  My daughter got to meet someone like her, someone she could identify with, someone who’s walked in her shoes first.

Addy talked about it afterward like she’d been personally approached by a celebrity.

And, in a way, she had.