When my niece, K, -yes, she of the many tattoos – was 6 years old, she called me. In the background echoed sounds of Sunday – football whistles from the TV, my brother fussing at referee calls and screaming “suggestions” at the QB, my sister-in-law clattering about in the kitchen. K never called unless she had something weighty on her little mind. So. I waited.
Finally:
“Tattoos are tacky on women, Rachael.”
Hmmm. . . I was a mite surprised as both K’s mom and her step mom, my sister-in-law, J, had several. Now, don’t fall over, but here I’m going to disclose that I, too, sport, um, body art. I’ll get to how and where in a moment. Wasn’t sure how to respond to this statement from my pint-sized chickie, but turns out I wasn’t required to just yet as she was plowing on.
“They’re tacky on the calf, the arm, the neck, the face- ” and she paused for the big wind up. In a rush of breath she spit out, “And they’re really tacky on the back.” Now my sweet girl K sat on the waiting end. In fact, I’m pretty sure she held her breath.
Very calmly, very adult-ly I should add, I responded. “K, I have a tattoo on my back.”
Her voice danced with glee. “I know.”
My brother’s deep laugh rumbled in the background, “K, give me the phone,” or something like that. He was laughing too hard for me to really understand him.
I’d always said I’d never, ever get a tattoo. I’d see a “marked” man or woman and make a snap judgment about their character. I mean, what kind of person – please substitute ‘low-life’ – gets a tattoo? Turns out, this kind of low-life. Excuse the cliché, but never say never. I’d always believed I was way, way, too classy for “that sort of thing.” HAH!
So, how did this strictly upper-middle-class white girl end up with a tattoo? Long story. You got time?
When I was 25 my marriage to my college sweet-heart, B, crumbled, shattered, dissolved. And so did I. Think of throwing a crystal goblet at the wall and the hundreds of tiny shards of glass lie smashed all over your floor. Yep, that was me. Complete and total devastation.
Now, if you ask any two people why they end a marriage, you’d probably get two totally different answer. Let me just say this: I can’t have children, and adoption was not an option for him. Were there other issues? Of course. Am I going to talk about them. Nope.
So, on to my tattoo . . .
B hated them. He left. I got a tattoo in rebellion. Is it a good reason? OF COURSE NOT! Do I regret it. OF COURSE I DO . . . sometimes. I didn’t when I did it, and I certainly didn’t when B asked to see it, and I got to say, “No,” with an enormous amount of satisfaction.
But I am left with small tattoo of a pink and yellow flower that has absolutely no personal significance on the small of my back. And it will be there FOREVER. Only now, it’s fading, and I’m an over-thirty-five year old woman with a “tramp-stamp.” Lovely. I suppose it could be worse – it could be a misspelled quote or a Chinese character that I thought said “peace” or “hope” but really said “shampoo” or “toe jam.”
Now, you know I can parley anything into a life lesson. So, here we go. The “never say never” goes without saying, but my tattoo is not simply permanent ink, it is a badge of honor – or memory: I survived. Yep, I’m taking a page out of Hester Prynne’s book. ( Like that little pun?)
When that marriage ended, I thought I would die. Frankly, I wanted to. But, as you are reading this many years later, you probably figured out the end of the story: I did not. But my survival was not predicated on myself alone. At my absolute lowest, and please understand that came in tsunami-like waves over several years, and not a single set point in time, I would never have kicked back to the surface without my family and my friends. And those four amazing women I wrote about before, well, they played an enormous part in that survival. Additionally, I need to be absolutely clear, no matter how much my family and friends loved me, no matter how much effort they poured into proving that life was worth staying around for, the single most important key to surviving that cataclysmic schism was my faith.
Now, I know God abhors divorce, and I completely understand why. He does not stand alone on this. In fact, He and I are like this (You can’t see it but my fingers are crossed.). Oh, heavens above, I hate it, too! And, here I’ll let you in on another painful secret from my past so that you have the complete picture , I’ve been through it twice, but that’s for another time.
Divorce inflicts catastrophic injury on everyone involved, not just the couple themselves but also their families, their friends, etc.. But God can, and does use anything to call us to Him. And He used my divorce from B to draw me close and hold me gently until I was ready to breathe again, stand up again, feel again. I’d like to think He used those shards of crystal on the floor to become hundreds of prisms throwing pieces of Himself, pieces of His light/Love, into the darkest recesses of my heart when I needed Him most. He did that through my family and friends, His word, and His still, small voice.
So, that tattoo on my back, I think I’ll choose to see it as an emblem of faith and hope for something better. And maybe all the tattoos on the guy in front of me in the supermarket – maybe those tattoos are emblems of Love and survival, too. Or they could just be the Chinese symbol for “belly button lint.” Hmmmh. . .
The Unexpected Life 