Slightly tangential, but: My mother doesn’t have a belly button.

She had it removed as a child, I don’t really know why. It was infected? Maybe? The doctors removed it, then put it in a small glass jar filled with formaldehyde for “safe keeping.” The formaldehyde had had log since dried up by the time I was a child, along the belly button itself that now looked like a little pig’s tail made of dried cookie dough. Mother kept it in a drawer in the kitchen where I often played with it. I used to take it to “Show & Tell” at school every year, although I don’t think my teachers or classmates ever really quite believed me.

Mother often wore bikinis while tanning in the back yard (it was the ’70s), and when you looked at her, your mind didn’t quite register at first the fact that she was missing her belly button. Just that something was “off.” Then it slowly dawned on you that her stomach as like a smooth road with no potholes. Very odd, indeed.

Anyway, until now, she was the only person I ever heard of who didn’t have a belly button.

Now, the Daily Mail is reporting that Paulina Casillas Landeros, 23, from Guadalajara, Mexico, underwent a dangerous operation to remove her belly button in order to get back at her family and give her ex-boyfriend a token of her undying love.

‘I was very angry,” she said. ” I wanted to cut all unions from everything and everyone. ‘I wanted to dehumanise myself in a symbolic way, I wanted to do something controversial.”

So… off with her belly button.

“I underwent an ‘operation’ done by a professional but he gave me very bad advice on how to take care of the trauma so it got infected. ‘I was suffering, I spent days in bed as if I were quarantined, I couldn’t stretch, push, stand up or laugh. ‘It gradually healed itself but not 100%- it will never close entirely.’

Paulina then decide to give to her now ex-boyfriend Daniel Ramirez as a token of her love.

She said: ‘I was very much in love with my then boyfriend, he supported me through many difficult times, and he is one of the most influential people in my life. ‘It was something I did in the spur of the moment, we were young and stupid but that’s the way I felt. ‘I put it in a small bag along with a note saying ‘I love you’, it was very emotional. ‘He has kept it and he will keep it forever because he knows the meaning behind it. ‘We are good friends now but we will always love each other.’

Sweet.

She says she realizes now that says her decision to remove her belly button was impulsive and reckless, but insists it is a “nice reminder that characterizes me.”

‘I do regret it when I put myself in my mum’s position, it must have been devastating for her, she was so sad. ‘I can’t imagine how it must feel, your own child wanting to break all their connection to you. ‘If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t do it again, it was impulsive, reckless and I hurt a lot of people. ‘Even though I did it for the wrong reasons, it has now taught me I should think things through before acting and it’s a nice reminder that characterises me.’

Pictures of the woman and her belly button here.

And my mother’s belly button? Lost. Or possibly thrown away. Very sad. I wish I still had it.

(Photo: Pixabay)