I wish my mole problem was one Mr. McGregor could relate to—a pesky varmint in my garden, a taunting nemesis. At least I would have a physical target, one I could see, not something akin to paranormal activity.
The mole I speak of is not the garden variety, but the skin variety.
I take full responsibility for my mole problem. I am a Sun Goddess, like Sylvia Plath who spent her summers bronzing her skin. I soaked up the sun day after day without a care in the world, at least while I was tanning. But I won’t blame my younger days, the days when no one tells you the danger, the harm, the everlasting effects that can never be undone.
Born in 1977, I grew up in a sunscreen-free household. My sister, who was four years older than me, and I ran around in sprinklers, splashed around in our plastic pool, and even went fishing with our dad. I was born a blonde, white-blonde hair that gradually darkened with each passing school year picture, eventually turning to undesirable dishwater blonde. I tanned like Malibu Barbie, never a hint of red, baking in the sun like a Thanksgiving turkey in the oven. My sister was a brunette with freckles that faded as she aged. She turned red before a tan set in. With two chain-smoking parents who smoked in the house, at least outdoors beneath the sun I could breathe.
In high school, I preferred my tan self to my pale self. My unshapely legs held visible veins in the wintertime; the sun made them vanish like disappearing ink. The bothersome brown hair on my arm also disappeared into my tan skin; my face glowed and my hair lightened because of the sun. I always knew I was a spring-summer kid, brainstorming ways to get out of winter recesses (never successful). I hated boots and snowpants and mittens and hats and scarves. I rode the bus to elementary school and had to suit up just so I wouldn’t have to lug all that gear with me. Venturing outside during snow days to make snow angels brought delight for at most five minutes. I dreamed of beach weddings and palm trees and seashells (although I couldn’t swim). I had to make do with our Midwestern backyard.
We had two huge trees in our yard that overlooked our deck, which stretched the length of the house. I had about a four-hour window to grab sun before the trees shadowed the deck; with every passing year, that window shrunk as the trees grew taller and fuller, blocking out the rays. Mom didn’t believe in loungey chairs, with only boxy wooden deck chairs for seating. She also didn’t believe in beach towels—I used a bath towel on the deck floor and placed a folded bath towel under my head. In those younger days, comfort need not matter with my limber bones.
My Walkman was a third appendage during high school. I obsessively made mix tapes from my CD collection, creating my own playlists for every mood. We bought 90-minute tapes; I crammed 45 minutes’ worth of songs on each side. That’s how long I tanned—per side—on the deck every summer day I didn’t work.
I always wore makeup, so my foundation provided some blockage from the sun. But I didn’t always apply it to my forehead since I rarely had zits or blemishes there. To help my eyeliner and lipliner stick better, I always put foundation under my eyes, on my eyelids, and around my lips. Other than the sunglasses on my face, there was nothing between me and the sun except the skimpy Seventies’ bikini Mom used to wear in her younger days. Mom didn’t care if we tanned in it, but preferred we not wear it in public.
If I wasn’t at the mall working in clothing stores, I had a date with the sun. On summer afternoons, you’d find me on the deck, listening to music. I knew every beat of every song, every inflection of every note.
I loved those first few moments upon leaving an air-conditioned room as the sun warmed my skin. I could feel it permeating lower skin layers, warming me from within. I relished those first minutes when the warm sun tingled cold skin, gently heating as my skin absorbed it, like a microwave for frozen people. I despised over air-conditioned buildings that freeze into the bones (I still do). I adored the heat in those days (I would only loathe the heat the two years I lived without air conditioning in my early twenties). Even during the hottest afternoons, I would lie on the deck the entire 45 minutes on a side before taking a break inside, guzzling ice water before baking my backside. Sometimes I’d sprawl on the living room carpet, dizzy from heat, cooling under the ceiling fan Mom always turned on low in the afternoons. Sometimes I wouldn’t quite make it the 45 minutes on my stomach, bailing after only five or six songs.
Then tanning booths became a thing.
I was not a fan.
In college, many girls on my floor gathered together to walk down the block to the tanning salon. Some of them returned red like Mr. Krabs, brushing it off as a base tan. One girl was almost an albino, with barely-there eyebrows, colorless hair, and pale freckles covering every inch of her body. She never turned into Malibu Barbie, settling more for a sunburnt peach.
By then I knew the dangers of tanning beds. Even by the late Eighties, tanning bed traumas had headlined the likes of Sally Jessie Raphael and Jenny Jones. My sister always used tanning beds, turning that same shade of red as those on my dorm floor, then eventually fading into a tan.
I loved the sun in its purest form. A tanning bed was fake. Where was the sky, the breeze, the summer temperatures? Plus, I had so much of the sun’s rays deep within my skin, I didn’t start to pale until Halloween, only losing the top sun-glowed layer of my skin those first few days of fall.
I would break down and use a tanning bed a few weeks before my wedding. The apartment we lived in didn’t provide a place to tan, unless I wanted to display myself in the middle of the parking lot. I didn’t mind the experience, those eight minutes of what I imagined Ripley felt like in her space capsule on Alien. It was the stench that I didn’t like. Sun-baked skin smells warm, the scent of whatever musky or fruity lotion comingling with the sun’s rays. But a tanning bed leaves a chemically induced smell, like the first time you wash a new pan in hot water (and then add a splash of spoiled coconut). Yet both smells reminded me of summer—I understood the need for people to use tanning beds who lived in cold, wintry states.
I only used tanning beds two more times in my life: when we rented a small box-like house that had zero sun due to the huge trees (although I was more scared of the gargantuan spiders that lived in the trees after finding one on our deck and one that drifted into a gift bag), and when we rented a townhouse that had no discernable yard to lay out in. I never turned that tanning booth shade of red. Having to drive to get a tan was annoying. Neither stint lasted long and I never used a tanning bed ever again.
When my son was born, I had little time to tan. Our split-foyer house had a tiny deck; the roof overhang equated to an all-shaded deck. I could have tanned out in our yard, but with a new baby, I had plenty of other things that needed to be done while he napped.
I wouldn’t start regularly tanning again until I was about 36 years old, plopping outside to read in the quiet of my backyard. For my birthday, my husband bought me a chaise lounge, a utilitarian one that angled my back nicely but was not comfy. I’d hike my sundress up above my knees as I read book after book in the summer sun, trading in my Walkman for memoirs.
My high school tanning routine returned when I moved to my current home and created a backyard sanctuary, with flowers and fountains and squirrels and birds. I donned skimpy bikinis, ones that I would never wear in public. I had less tolerance for the sun though, barely lasting thirty minutes per side in the heat. I loved big fluffy clouds, a momentary reprieve as the darkness cooled my skin.
At night in my bedroom with the glow of streetlights through the shades, I looked like a zebra, the pale white skin in the shape of a bikini and the deep dark tones of my tan skin. As I aged, cellulite must darken faster as the backs of my thighs looked like well-done meat. I realized I was probably tanning too much. By then I had turned forty.
But even so, I love those first days of spring, when the sun is bright and it’s barely 65 degrees. In the upper Midwest, that’s warm enough to tan. I’d even put on my bikini, knowing that in those first few minutes, my goosebumps would fade as the sun’s rays warmed me.
Surprisingly, the only wrinkles that developed were on my forehead, probably from a lack of sunscreen enhanced foundation. I looked like E.T., those first wrinkles appearing on my forehead in my early thirties, deepening as I aged. Yet I don’t have crows’ feet, nor those little lines that develop around the lips. My meticulous morning routine of makeup and hot rollers saved the rest of my face from wrinkling. But my chest has begun to look old, like those old women in charge of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders; despite their plump faces, the age spots and wrinkly skin on their chest reveal their true age. My biggest complaint about aging is my thinning hair and my drooping skin, neither related to my tanning (I think).
The winter doldrums settled in for a much longer season. Perhaps due to age or never leaving the Midwest, but I can no longer handle winter, which can begin as early as October and bleed into April. Light therapy does little, although the bright lamp has made itself useful for both me and my husband as our aging eyesight impedes our ability to see microscopic print. Four years ago, I finally purchased the car I had dreamed about ever since I was four, thanks to Barbie—a convertible.
Now I get extra doses of the sun every day, which stretches long after I sport a bikini and lie out on my deck. Even when the temperature barely reaches 60, I can blast the heat as I drive around with the top down. My scalp, my shoulders, my arms tingle in the heat, filling with Vitamin D. I thought a convertible would help shorten winter, but it’s had the opposite effect—now I feel sad when I can’t drive with the top down, even sadder when snow covers the roads, and I can’t even drive it because I need a four-wheel drive to safely travel to work.
But I adore my convertible, able to bask in the spring sun long before it’s time to wear a bikini and settle in on the deck.
It wasn’t until I started having moles removed, moles that came back questionable, did I start to think differently of the sun.