Grant didn’t have a problem with his birthmark, but everyone else seemed to. The large port wine birthmark spilling across his left eye and cheek was normal to him. But it was noticeable to others, and with each passing year, Grant grew more and more frustrated with the repetitious and invasive questions from strangers.
One day, for the first time in his life, Grant told his mother, Madeleine, “I wish I didn’t have my birthmark.”
“It had never been a thing to him, so we naturally started asking questions,” Madeleine says. “We asked if he just didn’t like it anymore and he said ‘No, it’s fine. I’m just so tired of people asking about it or trying to touch my face.’ It broke my heart.”
What a strong kid. He withstood increasingly uncomfortable interactions with strangers day after day, and it took hundreds to bring him down. But it only took one to change everything.
“All I knew about this kid was that Grant said he had reddish hair,” she remembers. “And that he was extraordinarily kind to my son.”
The extraordinarily kind reddish-haired child Madeleine describes approached Grant at school one day and asked the question: “What’s that on your face?” Grant began his standard explanation and steeled himself in anticipation of the standard response.
Instead, the unknown schoolmate shocked him by saying “Well, your birthmark is really cool,” leaving a stunned but gracious Grant with a restored opinion of his distinctive mark.
“When he told me, I knew I had to find this kid,” Madeleine says with a fond memory in her voice. “Grant said ‘I had the best day!’ I hadn’t seen that kind of joy in him for a while.” So she was determined to find the boy among the 400+ children at Grant’s school.
Over the next few weeks, Madeleine wielded some slick detective skills in an attempt to find the mysterious child Grant encountered. “It was such a mature thing for a kid to do, I thought for sure he’d be at least Grant’s age and in fourth or fifth grade.” So Madeleine was surprised when she finally tracked down the child — whose hair wasn’t red at all, it turns out — to a first-grade classroom in a separate wing of the school.
His name was Tucker, and his parents were just as surprised as Madeleine.
“It turns out Tucker is actually very shy,” she explains with a bit of wonder in her voice. “They said it was completely out of character for him, but they were proud to hear he’d been so kind.”
When they finally met, Madeleine snapped a photo of the two boys. Huge, toothy grins stretched their cheeks to capacity, arms flung over each others’ shoulders. They could have passed for lifelong friends. Madeleine felt compelled to share such a beautiful story of a child’s kindness and submitted the photo to Love What Matters. It began to spread instantly.
“I was excited to see that it resonated with so many people,” she says. “What it did for my son is amazing.”
Grant’s confidence skyrocketed. When the science fair took place later in the year, Madeleine began to brainstorm some ideas with her son, but Grant knew what he wanted to do.
“I want to make a presentation about birthmarks,” he told his mother. So they began researching: why people have birthmarks; what causes them; what different types there are. I didn’t find out if Grant won a prize at the science fair, but Madeleine noticed he won something better.
“Kids began approaching him with different comments,” she explains. “Suddenly it was ‘Hey, I saw your project, it was cool.’ Some kids even came up to him after the fair to ask him more about his project.”
Their opposing dispositions — Tucker shy and reserved, Grant energetic and outgoing — reversed themselves in each boy at just the right moment. That moment proved how two people who may not be close or compatible can still be confident and kind. And it illustrated the power such a small gesture has to change one’s outlook.
Madeleine remembers a subsequent visit to Grant’s dermatologist. “On the way home, I asked Grant if he would magically have it removed if he could.”
His response was exactly what she expected: “Are you kidding? No way! I LOVE my birthmark.”
*** By Clare Devlin Fraser ***