My little 6 year old granddaughter Kate Laender found a small freckle on her upper left arm and tried to wipe it off. When I asked her what she was doing, she burst into tears: "I've got something on my arm that I can't get rid of."
"Oh, sweetie," I replied, holding her in my arms . "It's a beauty mole. Don't scratch it with your fingertips. You've made your skin red, and it will hurt."
She stopped crying, and after a while, looked back at the freckles. "It's not a beauty spot. It's so weird, I'm going to remove it," she replied angrily, tears welling up from her eyes again.
I wiped her tears, shook her, and groped my way to explain, as grandmas usually do, hoping my words sounded wise. "Each of us is born with a special imprint. Some we can see and some we can't."
"What kind of imprint is invisible?" she asked.
"Well... a stamp of kindness, a stamp of generosity, even a stamp of love. We can't see them, but they're all very special stamps."
"Why can't my stamps be seen? I don't want one that you can. Visible," she said, her voice sounding furious.
"I can see many special marks of you, not just that one. The color of your eyes, the shape of your nose, the sound of your cry. There is no one else in this world that looks exactly like yours. Only you. The special imprint—internal and external—is what makes each of us different and special."
She didn't fully accept my explanation, but no longer Worried about her "beauty mole" and promised not to wipe it again. She jumped off my lap, pulled out that copy of Pinocchio (also known as Pinocchio) from her excursion bag, and asked me to read it to her.
The next morning, Kate Laound ran into the kitchen. "I love my beauty mole, Grandma!" She changed her mind, and I was happy, relishing the moment of feeling like a "proud grandma." She jumped on my husband's knee.
"I have a beauty mole. Would you like to see it?"
"Sure," my husband said with a big laugh.
"I didn't like it before, but now I do."
"Your grandma told me how sad you were when you discovered your beauty spot. So what made you change your mind?" my husband asked , while giving me a wink.
"I had a dream, I was telling many, many lies, every time I told a lie, my beauty mole would grow. It grew and grew, and it grew to the ground. I accidentally stepped on it, it was really painful, Grandma said, 'I told you not to scrape it with your fingertips.'"
Gone was my fluttering "grandma moment," replaced by a roar of laughter that filled the kitchen.
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