First Tattoo

This past weekend Granddaughter turned eighteen – that magic age for getting certain things you have waited for so long to own. It was a good day to get her first tattoo because suddenly at eighteen it becomes a legal birthday gift from Grandpa and Grandma. For a long time she has known what it would be: A semicolon followed by a heartbeat.

semicolon with heartbeat

She explains it like this: You know how when a writer ends a sentence but then decides to go on writing? Rather than a period, you can use a semicolon. That’s what the semicolon tattoo means – you have decided not to end the sentence but to write another and go on living. I heard her telling the tattoo artist what it meant and I was pleased by his sincere response. He liked the image and thought it had great meaning, but he wanted to give her some advice and I heard him repeat it at least two times. “Remember,” he said, “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” The phrase was rather like a sound bite from a therapist or the title of a Ted Talk, but what an unlikely setting! I guess I don’t need to say my heart was grinning from ear to ear as I listened to this exchange.

"Suicide: a permanent solution to a temporary problem"

I have always believed that for many tattoos hold a special meaning and purpose for the person who has them. The painful procedure that accompanies a tattoo can be a signal, a sign, that I am alive. I am not numb to life. (I’ve heard young people talk about feeling numb to the world, of wondering if life is an illusion or worth living.) Physical pain can actually stir hope in someone whose life has been filled with difficulties or depression. A tattoo can be a permanent reminder of an event or a love that imparts deep meaning. It tells the world “I have survived.” It is a reminder to the self to go on living even when things are hard.

Living with Granddaughter and loving her has been, in many ways a gift to us – a reminder of how difficult life can be for a young person and how thankful we are to have the place and space for her. But the next tattoo? Hers to pay – altogether.

Too much of everything

A few days ago I tried to get my fill of the five grandchildren who live in Chattanooga. It didn’t happen. I mean, I didn’t get enough. Minnesota is just too far away.

Mason turns six next week so I asked him what he’d like for his birthday. He’s a little taller than his older twin brothers, has a raspy husky voice and is extremely suspicious of green food, but he has a sweetness about him that sometimes makes him almost vulnerable. Makes you want to take him in your arms and shelter him from Evil. I figured he’d probably want some sort of computer game, a fast bike, something big and costly that grandkids think their grandparents are good for. I was wrong. He wanted a stuffed shark that he could sleep with and a jump rope. He demonstrated how he could jump forward and backward – one awkward hop at a time. Later that day we were at Old Navy strolling his little sister and him around as Manessah looked for blue jeans. Him mom plopped a hat on his head that he wore until we checked out and he looked so longingly at it and asked if only he could have it and she said no, not today. But I saw it, and I knew it should be part of his birthday present.

Next day Denis and I found a soft, vicious-looking shark with a jaw full of tender teeth. Though I didn’t find a jump rope, we gave the rest to him as an early birthday present.

The gift of watching him open them with shrieks of joy and genuine surprise made me want to cry with delight myself. Too often, I’m bored, worn and world-weary. Sometimes I have too much of everything and it is the role of suffering or deprivation that makes gifts of ordinary life come alive again when they arrive on my doorstep.

The base ridge

Five-year-old Anson showed me his thumb as soon as we arrived last Thursday. “Grandma, look at this!” At first I thought it had been painted purple. But he’s too boy to let anyone near him with nail polish. Gender roles are very distinctly defined in his mind. It had been slammed in the bathroom door at preschool and was healed enough so he could lift the nail all the way up like a hinged flap. I shuddered and almost gagged. He smiled and yanked it all the way off. “It’s pokin’ me,” he declared, meaning it was getting hung up in his hockey gloves when he tried to pull them on. He showed the dead nail to his dad hoping for some kind of reward like maybe a thumbnail fairy would show up if he put it under his pillow.

Turning sixty-one is something like getting slammed in the bathroom door. It surprises you, and sometimes it hurts a little. People feel sorry for you. They send sympathy and love. And friends make you supper of easily chewed foods. Thankfully I have no body parts to put under my pillow, but sometimes my brain flaps around, unhinged, searching for right words more often than it used to. I can swing certain body…okay, arm parts that were once taut and hard, especially those triceps. I remember watching my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Griggs, write on the blackboard, her underarms flapping, and I swore mine would never look like that. The young are just that, young. Unknowing. Unable to think past their stomachs hoping to make it to lunch in twenty minutes if the history lesson would only end.

Anson’s thumb is now tender and vulnerable, but from the root a new one is already growing. It’s awfully small, just a ridge at the base. But it’s coming. It’ll be okay. In a few months he’ll have a new one altogether.

As I scope out the years to come, I see I’ve got a ridge at the base, too. I have to cup it in my hands sometimes and blow on it, in order to see it, in order to keep it going. But it’s there. Waiting to spring up. It won’t be going away even if the surface turns a little discolored. I read some of David’s words this morning. “…consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever.”

I love the superlatives here: FOEVER AND EVER. Denis and I have an ongoing discussion about the use of superlatives, which I’m not allowed when complaining. Like: They ALWAYS. You NEVER, EVER. Etc. But God gets to make exceptions to the rule. Yes. Against all odds, heaven awaits along with new bodies. My base ridges belong to God forever and ever.