Survivor Profile - Jane Calder

INSPIRATION TO TAKE A CHANCE

When I was three, my brothers and I were in front of the fireplace playing airplanes just after our communal bath. We used to stand on the hearth pretending that we were bi-plane pilots just like Snoopy and the Red Baron. To make it more realistic, we wore our underwear on our heads and imagined that they were the leather pilot helmets and the leg holes were our goggles. One by one we would zoom off the hearth and swoop around the sofa mountains and the coffee table valleys, buzz over the arm chair villages and back to the army landing pad hearth. I was the last as I was the youngest.

As I waited to zoom and swoop, my nightgown fluttered into the flames and caught on fire. I took off from the landing pad with a roar of my engine and headed for the 'sofa mountains' when I realized I had somehow caught on fire. I tried to distance myself from the flame, but it only got bigger and bigger. My mother, who was on the phone in the other room and used to the noise of three noisy children, didn't realize that I had been attacked and that my airplane was in danger of crashing. She came to my rescue when our screams of joy turned into real screams of terror. Luckily, the bathtub was still full of water from bath time. She gathered me up and thrust me into the bathtub. The entire back of both of my legs from the ankle were burned.

When I was growing up I detested my scars as they were out there for all to see at the pool, at the beach, in gym class. Today, I embrace my scars. They have become part of me, and I encourage my close friends to love them too. My father offered to pay for the skin grafts once I turned 25, but I couldn't imagine being me without them. They remind me of my inner strength.  I'm used to being stared at, pointed at, and talked about. As an ESL teacher, I try to channel this strength to my students and lead my students through a complicated maze of insecurity and doubt to a place where they can feel proud about being different.

Everyone is self-conscious about something, be it their big nose, shiny braces, baby fat, or burn scars. If you ask the people who love you how they would describe you, it's not any of those things. Perhaps it's how you  make them laugh or the thoughtful presents you make for them. It might be how you inspire them to be better people. My scars will always be a part of me, the part that reminds me to take a chance.

Cecily-Jane Calder, Burn Survivor – Vancouver, BC

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