We All Have Scars

I have been reading rave reviews of the book The Scar by Charlotte Moundlic over the past few months, so I decided to interlibrary loan the book so that I could take a look at this book for myself.  I was thrilled to get the call from my public library the other day telling me the book was in! 

For those of you who aren't familiar with the book, here is the summary from Indiebound.org.

"A little boy responds to his mother's death in a genuine, deeply moving story leavened by glimmers of humor and captivating illustrations.

When the boy in this story wakes to find that his mother has died, he is overwhelmed with sadness, anger, and fear that he will forget her. He shuts all the windows to keep in his mother's familiar smell and scratches open the cut on his knee to remember her comforting voice. He doesn't know how to speak to his dad anymore, and when Grandma visits and throws open the windows, it's more than the boy can take--until his grandmother shows him another way to feel that his mom's love is near. With tenderness, touches of humor, and unflinching emotional truth, Charlotte Moundlic captures the loneliness of grief through the eyes of a child, rendered with sympathy and charm in Olivier Tallec's expressive illustrations."

The book is really well done.  You could feel the emotions the little boy was going through on every single page.  I was crying after reading the first page and did a lot of thinking about "scars" I, myself, have and how they have made me a stronger person for them.

Perhaps the biggest scar I carry with me every day which can't outwardly be seen is the scar of divorce: my parents'.  This happened to me when I was 5 and still at the age of 40 it affects me.  It's the reason I dated my husband for 4 years before we even talked about getting married.  It's the reason I want my boys to see their parents together having fun because I never saw that.  And this scar is the reason my husband and I would fight tooth and nail for our relationship because we never want our boys to go through what we did as children of divorce.

Of course, I have physical scars, too, which remind me of various events in my life: the malignant breast tumors I had removed, the scar across my stomach from two c-sections.  Both were very painful at the time, but I wouldn't trade them for the world because I'm better for having them.

As the little boy in the story moves on with his life, so must we all, but the scars are a reminder of what we've been through to make us the people we are today and I, for one, wouldn't trade my scars for the world.