I remember the first time I saw the long, scraggly line on top of my forearm. “It looks great,” I lied. The dermatology resident sat across from me, having just uncovered the wound left by his first surgery. As we both stared at it, I was remembering the roomful of people who’d surrounded my gurney, scrutinizing every move he made as he excised my skin cancer. I had felt sorry for him at the time. It was too big an audience for his first excision. So I was determined to be kind now.

Now, whenever I trace my finger over my forehead scar, I time travel three thousand miles away—not to Dr. G’s small-town office or even to that dirt road where I split a part of my forehead open.

I hadn’t seen you since I told you of your breast cancer. Because you didn’t want to live with the threat of a recurrence, you decided to go for the big surgery, a double mastectomy. We talked a bit about that experience, how you coped during the surgery and recovery, how supportive your husband was, how you felt ready to move on.

March 29, 1955, two months before my twentieth birthday, began with sunshine and cloudless skies, and we opened the window of our sorority-house room to let in the gentle spring breeze. Walking to the University of Texas campus that morning was a joy. As I breathed in the scents of spring, I had no inkling that before the day was over, my life would change.

You can’t see it, the way it’s tucked under a fold of skin, but I can’t forget that it’s there. I see it whenever I look in the mirror at my shoulder-length hair and remember—despite my best efforts not to—the months when large bald spots dotted the crown of my head.

My physical scars are minimal, and I know the history of each and every one.