>In Which My Right Ear Goes Into Hiding

>When I arrived at my parents’ home for a visit a few weeks ago, I put away my things, got the kids settled, and sat down with my mom for our traditional catching-up chat. We talked about various family friends- who was getting married, who was getting divorced, whose kids had gone into rehab, and who’d just gotten plastic surgery.

“I’m not against plastic surgery or anything,” I said after taking a sip of tea, “but it’s just so expensive!”

“Well, you might want to do something some day,” Mom said breezily. “For instance, you might want to fix your ear.”

I nearly spit out my drink. “What do you mean, fix my ear?”

“You know, Lindsay,” my mom said, wrinkling her brow. “Fix it, where it was chopped off.”

My hand moved protectively to my right earlobe. When I was a kid and had my ears pierced, they got infected and I had to let them close up. Scar tissue left a painful lump on the back of my right earlobe, which kept me from even wearing clip-on earrings. So when I had my tonsils out as a teenager, the doctor used the opportunity to cut off the scar tissue behind my earlobe, too. Once it healed, I noticed my right earlobe was a slightly different shape from my left earlobe. But it was nothing anyone would ever notice but me.

Or so I thought.

“I don’t understand what there is to fix,” I told my mom. “It was fixed sixteen years ago.”

Mom snorted. “It was amputated!” she said. “It was very upsetting. Your earlobe is now deformed.”

“Deformed?!” I cried. “No one even notices my earlobe! No one has ever said a word about it!”

“Well, that’s because you wear your hair down!” my mom said. “But you can’t wear it up. And you can never cut it short.”

I stared at her, speechless. How was it possible that I had lived this long with a grotesque deformity and not even known it?! My mother might not realize it, but I wear my hair up all the time! Were people pointing and whispering about me all these years, without me even realizing what was going on? Was I known around town as That Brave Writer with the Earlobe Deformity, when all along I thought I was known simply as That Bitch who Pissed Off Martina McBride and The Green Hills MOMS Club?

It was almost too much to take.

“You’ve just rocked my world, Mom,” I said, slumping in my chair.

“I don’t know why you’re acting so surprised,” Mom said dryly. “You were very upset with the results at the time.”

“I don’t remember that at all,” I said, frowning. “I must have put an emotional block on it.”

I’m still reeling from this news. What is there to depend on in this world if I can’t even trust my own earlobe?! I still don’t quite know what to make of it. But I do know one thing.

YOU WILL NEVER SEE MY RIGHT EAR AGAIN.