Sunburn

The last evening at the beach. No sunburn. Of course not. We have a beach umbrella. We retreat to the condo for lunch and reading and naps during peak sun hours. We use #50 sunscreen on our faces and #30 on the rest. Sunburn?? That is soooo Not Done. My one undisputed success as a parent is that blonde, blue-eyed, pale-skinned Owen did not experience sunburn until he was 17 and went to the beach with friends. Of course, he also assumed it was totally normal to swim clad in swimming trunks that went down to his mid-calves and a long-sleeved shirt and a pith-helmet-like cap that covered not only his head but his neck. Still, the point, the victory, is that he was 17-friggin' years old when he came home, pointed in horror to his deep red, just-about-to-blister shoulders, and said, "Mom, this really hurts. What is this?"

Such a contrast with my own upbringing, when it was simply expected that every summer I went to the beach, I got horribly burned, my temperature spiked, I was miserable, my skin erupted in blisters, I "peeled"--meaning I shedded vast swathes of skin that I could hold and drape along the furniture and wad into a ball--and then I emerged with "a tan," which we all assumed was a Good Thing.

My mom tells this heartbreaking story of my dad, taking his four older sons, all between age 2 and 7, to Florida for a week in the spring, to give my mom, home with baby #5 (not me--I was #6), a bit of a break. And after the first day at the beach, Dad shepherded his four little guys through the parking lot--and they were all sobbing. A gentle man, my dad, but come on, he'd driven the little rugrats all the way down from Chicago, all on  his own in the station wagon, and given him this splendid day on this magnificent beach and now they were all whimpering and moaning. . . WTF, man!. . . so he basically beat them into the car, oblivious to the fact that his sons, in fact, needed hospitalization, that the hot Florida sun had fried and crisped the white-as-white-can-be skins of his phalanx of little blonde Dutch boys.

God, I hate that story.

But Dad had no idea. No one had any idea. When the first #6 sunscreen lotion came onto the market in my early college years, I used it --much to the amusement and incomprehension of family and friends, who just couldn't understand why any rational person would employ such a radical sunblock and so ensure that she would remain such an incredibly unattractive shade of pale. I didn't want to be unattractive. I just hated the pain of sunburn enough to choose "ugly" over "in-need-of-medical-care."

And now I await my first skin cancer diagnosis. The fact that I've spent all of my adult life looking wan and washed out, eschewing the sun, this will count for nothing. I know this. I resent this. But I know this. I know skin cancer waits, lurking, bound to happen, the assured results of all those annual bad burns. The intervening years of copious suntan lotion and rigorous hat-wearing and assiduous shade-seeking will count for nothing. The fact that I've spent my adult years not at the seashore or beach but rather in libraries and offices and archives; the fact that I wear the same swimsuit for years, years and years, on end, til the elastic wears out, for pete's sake, because why spend money on something that one only uses for a few days each decade; the fact that I've never been Brown and Beautiful, the tanned Beloved One of high school dreams. . . none of this will count. I am doomed by biology, by genes and generation, by my blonde hair and blue eyes and alabaster skin (ok, sounds egocentric but one boyfriend long long ago called my skin "alabaster"; he turned out to be narcissistic and gay [not that I have a problem with gay, except when it's a guy who's promising to marry me. . .] but still, I stick by and totally claim the "alabaster"). My comfort: Owen does not, cannot face the same future.

Of course there's a certain irony at work here. Enormous colorful tattoos now cover most of Owen's beautiful skin, which I oh-so-carefully and consciously protected againt the sun's damaging rays. "I only go to reputable places," he tells  me. "Mom, it's organic ink. Totally safe. No problem." Really? No problem? Vast quantities of ink injected into his skin and "no problem"?

Dunno. What if I'd plucked off that long-sleeved tee-shirt, eschewed the #50 sunscreen, let him get totally burned as a boy? Would he regard his skin differently? Would he see it as more vulnerable? Limited? In need of care and protection?

I imagine not. Hell. I did my job. I protected what I was supposed to protect when I was supposed to protect it. The rest is up to him. Me? I gotta go check for moles.