Learning to Love My Nose

By Dallas Nicole Woodburn

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.

~Kahlil Gibran

It was a sixth-grade Friday afternoon like any other. I was riding the bus home from school, sitting next to my friend Krystal, both of us joyous that it was finally the weekend. At the bus stop before mine, a few boys I didn't know very well pushed down the aisle past us.

"Bye, Big Nose!" one of them called, waving to us. He and his friends laughed and scrambled off the bus.

Big Nose? Was he talking to us? I glanced over at Krystal. Her nose was a tiny ski slope, delicate and dainty. There was no way anyone would call her Big Nose.

My cheeks flushed. That must mean they were referring to me. I knew I didn't have a cute button nose like Krystal, but I had never thought of my nose as particularly big, either.

"Those guys are mean," Krystal said. "You have a great nose."

She was trying to make me feel better, but her words only confirmed my fears: those boys had been addressing me. I had a huge honking nose, and all this time I hadn't even known it. I fought the instinct to cover my nose with my hands. When my stop came, I ran off the bus and into the safety of my mom's car.

"What's wrong, sweetheart?" Mom asked as I slumped in the front seat, trying not to cry.

"My nose is ugly. I hate it."

"What? That's nonsense. You have a beautiful, strong nose. Your nose is perfect."

I stared gloomily out the window, my sunny Friday mood completely gone. I didn't want my nose to be strong. I wanted a delicate, dainty nose like the other girls at school.

As soon as we got home, I raced upstairs and shut myself in the bathroom. Usually, I looked at myself straight on, and my nose didn't seem very big from the front. It was fairly thin and not too long. But then I opened the mirrored medicine cabinet, tilting it at the right angle so I could see myself in profile.

Oh, no! I did have a big nose!

I felt like I'd been punched in the gut.

Even worse, there was a slight bump in my nose at the bridge, in the exact place my sunglasses perched. I experimented, putting the sunglasses on and peering at my profile through the dark lenses. Did the sunglasses hide the bump, or draw attention to it? I decided they made the bump — and my nose — seem a little bit smaller. If only I could wear sunglasses all the time!

I spent much of the afternoon staring into the bathroom mirror, studying my big-nosed profile like I had stared at my bloody, badly-scraped knee a few years before on the blacktop basketball courts: it disgusted me, but I couldn't seem to look away. I tried pressing down on my nose, momentarily flattening it, but as soon as I took my hand away it regained its normal shape with the awful bump.

Finally, on the verge of tears, I closed the medicine cabinet and looked at my face straight on in the mirror. All this time, the world had known I had a huge nose and I had been oblivious. I imagined that everyone at school secretly referred to me as Big Nose behind my back. I wanted to crawl under my bedcovers and hide in my room forever.

A couple days later, we were over at my grandfather's house for dinner. My grandmother Auden had passed away when I was in kindergarten and Gramps never remarried. My family joined him for dinner at least once a week, and I always looked forward to these visits. Gramps told the best stories about growing up in a small Ohio farm town, playing football in college, traveling the world. My favorite stories were about Auden, who Gramps described as the most beautiful lady he'd ever met. One day, I dreamed, I would meet someone who felt that way about me. Maybe then I would feel beautiful, too.

Gramps always left the front door unlocked for us, but he wasn't in the kitchen or the living room when we arrived. "He's probably upstairs," my dad said. "Go tell him we're here."

I climbed upstairs and found him in his bedroom, staring at a framed photograph in his hands. He looked up when I came in.

"Dally!" he said. "How are you, my girl?" He smiled, but his eyes looked sad. I walked over and sat down on the bed next to him.

"Is that Auden?" I asked, looking at the photograph. It was a black-and-white photo of a glamorous young woman with short-cropped blond hair and wide, pretty eyes. She was smiling at the camera like she knew a wonderful secret. I could tell why Gramps fell in love with her.

"Yep, that's your grandmother. I was missing her a lot today and wanted to look at her. This photo was taken the year we met."

"She's so beautiful," I said.

"The most beautiful woman in the world," Gramps said. "Inside and out." He looked over at me and smiled. "Next to you, of course."

"Thanks, Gramps." But I knew he was just being nice. In my head, I heard the echoing laughter of those boys on the bus: Bye, Big Nose! Remembering it made my cheeks flush with embarrassment.

"You look just like her, you know," Gramps said. "The older you get, the more and more you resemble her."

"I do?" This was news to me.

"Yep. You have the same nose. You got your profile from Auden, that's for sure."

I traced my fingertip down my nose, over the bump that had made me feel so self-conscious. I looked again at the photograph of my grandmother as a young woman.

And then, I saw it. At the bridge of her nose, a tiny bump.

She really did have the same nose as me! And she was smiling like she couldn't be happier.

That was the day I began to love my nose. When I look in the mirror, I don't see a huge honking nose anymore. Now I see a link to my heritage. I look at my nose and imagine the long line of strong, loving women who came before me. And I think of my grandma Auden, who in some small way is kept alive through my own nose with its beautiful bump.

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