When you encounter other humans and they comment on your child’s face, there’s an overwhelming array of responses, not all of them nice, running through your head.

 

I have been there.

I have heard the misinformed, “Oh, that’ll go away!”

I have heard variations on the ever-humorous, “Wow, didja slap her?”

I have heard meddling old ladies tell me, “Get some sunscreen on that baby, she’s burning!”

I have felt defensive.  I have felt like screaming.  I have felt like rolling my eyes and snarking.

 

But.

I don’t.  In spite of overwhelming temptation (and a culture that tells us to be offended by every word and look), I don’t.  I give them room to be human.  Because I’ve been deeply humbled in a few encounters with other humans myself.

Allow me to share 3 of those encounters with you here; three times when I’ve embarrassed myself with my own indignance and pride.

I’ll continue the theme of how we ‘encounter others’ in my next post, but for now, just let me share my embarrassment with you today.

Parents, I hope these encounters help ease your mind and empower you with grace when encountering humans in the world, even when you’re not feeling very gracious.

 

1. I’ve written about this one before, but it bears revisiting.

One day, I was standing in line for ice cream at a crowded, noisy, charming small-town candy shop.  Little Addy (probably almost 2 at the time) was in my arms, looking backward over my shoulder.  Suddenly, a guy behind me boomed out with a loud voice (BOOMED! AUDIBLY!): “HEY!  SHE HAS A BIRTHMARK!”  My back stiffened, my arms tightened, my jaw locked; I checked Addy to see if she’d heard, and began turning around slowly (expecting, I suppose, to death-glare the nitwit into submission, because acting on any other maternal instinct would have gotten me arrested).

Before I could turn all the way around to glare down this ignoramus, he continued, “JUST LIKE ME!”  And, voila, there before me stood a tall, handsome, confident young man, maybe 30 or so, with a HUGE port wine stain on his face that was indeed just like Addy’s, only even bigger and even darker.  It wrapped up onto his scalp, which was proudly clean-shaven.

He wasn’t ignorant.  He was confident – and I saw in one glance that it must have been a hard-won confidence.  He had earned it.  He definitely knew more than I did.  His enthusiasm was contagious, and it was exactly what I needed.

This marked stranger was generous and happy to welcome us into his club.  I was ready to crawl into a hole, but we struck up a conversation about laser treatments instead, and he warmly answered my many questions about his experiences growing up with his stain.

I have never forgotten that feeling of welcome, of relief in finding the camaraderie I hadn’t even realized I’d been seeking.

And I’ve also never forgotten how close I came to shutting out such a rich experience, simply because I ignorantly assumed that anyone speaking a single word about my daughter’s birthmark must know less than I do.

 

2. Addy underwent her first laser surgery when she was 5 weeks old, and then for the next two years she had a surgery each month. So we spent a lot of time at Children’s hospital, hanging out in the pre-surgery waiting room with other families about to be admitted for various minor outpatient surgeries.  Dr. Z. scheduled his laser surgeries for the same day each month, and the play area was often dotted with other port-wine-stained kids and their apprehensive parents.

One morning in that waiting room, around her 9^th surgery, I struck up a conversation with a mom whose healthy-looking 12-year-old daughter was sitting beside her.  Addy was crawling all over my lap, and her unique face came up naturally in conversation.  I began telling the mom what Addy was here for, and how Addy’s had a number of surgeries already, and how her face gets bruised every time.  (At this point, we had more experience than many other laser-surgery parents there, so I was used to answering questions.)

This mom replied that her daughter was also here for a laser surgery with Dr. Z.  I pointed to the play area and inquired which little one was hers, since the older kid next to her was clearly fine.  “Oh, no, it’s this one,” she said with a laugh, putting her hand on her twelve-year-old.  “She’s got a port wine stain all over her back, and also all the way down both legs, and it’s really thick, and she’s had a ton of laser surgeries already.  We lost track ages ago.  She’s on swim team, since contact sports aren’t great for her, and she used to get embarrassed about wearing a swim suit, but she’s just had to make peace with it now that she’s on the team.  We try to laser it whenever we can…”

I was amazed.  This healthy girl was hiding a stain like Addy’s?  And an even bigger one?  And I can’t see it?  And an even thicker one?  And she’s had more surgeries?  And she’s struggling with uncovering it for swim team?

The whole time I’d been talking to this mom, I’d been assuming that she probably didn’t know much about port wine stains, and that I was ‘informing’ her, while in fact she knew much more than I did.  Again, I wanted to crawl into a hole, but she was gracious and warm.

 

3. When Addy was just a month old and her port wine stain was still very dark, Keith & I brought her over to a friend’s home to meet his whole family, including his parents and his younger siblings (whom we ourselves didn’t yet know very well).

In that first month of Addy’s life, I had already received a lot of warm but maddeningly erroneous encouragement from ignorant people telling me, “Oh, don’t you worry, that birthmark will go away.”  Even the nurses at Addy’s birth had said it.  I had wanted to scream at every single wrong one of them: “No it won’t!  Not without laser treatments!  A LOT of laser treatments!”  They’d meant well, but they’d been confusing port wine stains with hemangiomas, and by the time that first month had passed, I’d had it *up to here* with bad advice, and was ready to snap if, so help me, I had to hear to that glib dismissal one more time.

We arrived at our friend’s house, and two younger sisters enthusiastically began giving me & Addy a tour of the house, talking over each other as we went.  “Ooo, what’s that thing on her face?”  “Is that a birthmark?”  “That’s so cool! Our little brother has one—“  “Yeah, but it’s like almost gone now—“  “Yeah, it’s like SO MUCH lighter than it was when he was born—“  “Because it was SO DARK when he was born—“  “But it went away!”  “Yeah!  Hers’ll go away, too!”

There it was.  I wanted to snap.  If they hadn’t been so charmingly exuberant, I would’ve just about lost it.  But I kept my cool because I love this clan.  I tried to diplomatically cut in with, “Well, you know, this isn’t a hemangioma, it’s a port wine stain and –“  “Yeah!  Yeah!  That’s what he had!”  And they were off again, chattering on the tour, completely oblivious to their own ignorance.

Later, we all gathered back in the kitchen to chat and to “ooh” and “aah” over Baby Addy, who was now asleep in her car seat.  Our friend’s mom gently pulled me aside and asked me with a sidelong glance at my baby, “So… Have they told you about Sturge-Weber syndrome?”

I looked at her, dumbfounded that she would know about Sturge-Weber, a series of difficult complications unique to port wine stains.  She called over her youngest son, brushed his hair off his forehead and said, “This is where his port wine stain was; you can still see spots of it.”

The other siblings started excitedly talking over each other again: “Yeah, it was really dark!”  “And he had LOTS of surgeries!”  “And he had other problems from it, too!”  “Oh yeah, he definitely had other problems, too!”

Ahhhhhh… okay…  So, when the sisters had said it had gotten lighter… they’d actually meant that it was lighter *after* a lot of laser surgeries… And they were trying to encourage me, to tell that me that it could get lighter with those surgeries… And they were living with Sturge Weber Syndrome on top of it.

They’d known exactly what a port wine stain was.  They were walking that same path, many steps ahead of me.  With many, many more bumps along that path.  And I had tuned them out, not even hearing their wisdom between the lines.

 

In each of the three moments above, I had assumed, without even trying, that the people around me were somehow more ‘ignorant’ than I; that they somehow needed to be ‘educated’ on My Baby.

The truth, in each instance, was that their bumbling hid not ignorance, but wisdom – which I could heed or ignore at my peril.

 

There’s a 4^th story here – but in this one, the tables were turned.  It has nothing to do with birthmarks, but it definitely made me chuckle.

Back when I worked in banking, I got into the elevator at the end of a workday.  I worked on the 26^th floor of a building filled largely with bankers and lawyers, and every stop on the end-of-day descent added another suit.

The doors opened to a law firm floor, where a family was waiting to get on – a lawyer, his wife, and their young son.  It appeared that Mom and toddler had visited Dad’s office at the end of the day to pick him up, and now they were all leaving together.

This mom looked tired and frazzled, and she spoke just a bit sharply at her toddler when he ran into our crowded elevator.  I smiled at the boy; he was cute, and he wasn’t doing anything naughty (other than being a toddler, and he could hardly help that).

As she navigated his empty stroller into the elevator with deep sighs, she looked at my obviously pregnant belly and my indulgent smile, and said to me with pursed lips, “Ahh, well, this will be you soon.”

Ohhhh, sweetheart.  I laughed out loud with my hand on my belly: “This is number three,” I clarified for everyone.

The suits around us chuckled.  She turned beet red.

She had probably assumed by my suit, age and departure time that I must be expecting my first child.  Not an unreasonable assumption.  And she had therefore assumed that she knew more than I did about toddlers; this clearly left her indignant that I, an ignorant stranger, would dare to silently comment on her mothering with my naiively indulgent smile.

In fact, I’d been in her shoes (twice already), and I’d had those days (twice as many).  I’d had many, many of those days.  Only with, ahem, TWO toddlers at once and a very pregnant self, thank you very much.

 

So even when you think that someone’s behaving ‘ignorantly’ and you’re annoyed, take a deep breath and give them room to be human.  Not only will you keep yourself from saying something that hurts them, but you’ll keep yourself from saying something that embarrasses you.

Because if they’re interacting with you at all, there’s probably a reason why.  They probably see some common ground.  And there’s a good chance that they might actually know more than you do.  Assume the best, give them grace, and listen for their wisdom between the lines.