They chose to see and to be seen, to look honestly and to stand honestly in the light, and it made them, at ten and sixteen, braver and freer and more whole than my sister had managed to become in forty years.

I used to worry, in Maya’s hardest years, about what her birthmarks would cost her, how much of her life she would spend hiding, how heavy the concealment would be to carry.

I do not worry anymore.

Because she does not hide, and she will not, for the rest of her life, spend a single day of it pretending to be someone she is not, which is a burden that turns out to be far heavier than any birthmark, and one my sister will carry to the end.

My daughter’s marks are a map written across her skin, unique and beautiful and entirely her own, and she wears them in the sunlight now, on beaches and in galleries, unedited, unhidden, unafraid.

And it was her little brother, with a camera and the wisdom to know exactly where to point it, who first helped her see that the thing she had spent her childhood trying to hide was, all along, the very thing most worthy of being seen.