A Mother's View
Fri., April 14, 09:23 AM
Whenever I see pictures of scrawny newborns or preemies, I’m thankful all over again for my babies. Since I carried them all full term, they were large and filled out and beautiful.
Our firstborn seemed such a precious gift! She looked like Husband – a blessing in itself – and she had the dark eyes and rosy skin that I had always wanted myself. She was perfect.
A few days after we got home from the hospital, I noticed she had scratched her cheek. The first thought that went through my mind was, “Every time I get something nice, it gets spoiled right away.” Followed by the voice of reason: “It will heal.” She wasn’t a doll, after all, she was a living being. For a lot of years, that was a comfort. She might be damaged, but she would heal. Even when she bleached her beautiful black hair to white, I knew it would grow back. She dyed it black, as a matter of fact, when she realized that she couldn’t afford to have those black roots touched up every other week!)
However, fifteen or so years ago, she became interested in tattoos. That same kid that was afraid to get her ears pierced was all about the body modification scene – tattoos, piercings, implants, scarification. Two eyebrow piercings failed, because her healthy body rejected them, but she continued to do other things to blight her appearance.
Somehow, she also learned from her experiences. She did receptionist/data entry work at a tattoo shop and, in the process, learned about sterile fields and cross-contamination. She practices clean procedures better than some health care professionals I’ve met. She is Red Cross certified in first aid, in part so that she can help care for people at “suspensions.” (Don’t ask.) Somehow being part of the body modification community led her to learn web design and online journalism. Maybe nothing I learned about this stuff is wasted either.
As I always do with prejudices, I have examined my dislike of tattoos. When I was a child, they were “not respectable.” You might make an exception for a guy who had been in the navy; he was probably drunk when he got his tattoo, anyhow. But women? A woman who had a tattoo was probably a prostitute. And probably had something contagious. Who knew what you could catch from a dirty needle?
When the world learned about the atrocities in the Nazi concentration camps, there was another reason to hate tattoos: the Nazis identified each prisoner with a number tattooed on his or her wrist. Who would want to emulate that?
Now, I know the world has changed. Many tattoo artists have a lot of talent; I can appreciate it, even if I’d rather see it on a wall instead of an arm. Techniques are safer, so that, at a properly licensed shop, no one need to worry about dirty needles or ink. I know plenty of perfectly nice women who wear discreet, pretty art, and many of them put clothing over their tattoos except when in like company.
At this point, there is a very fine distinction between the gold chai that I wear on a chain and the tattoo that Purple Chai wears on her wrist. Most of the time, I don’t take mine off either.
Unfortunately, most of my daughter’s tattoos are neither pretty nor discreet. A small feather on her hand, a Chinese character on her arm, even the butterfly near her throat – these might get by. But a “Calvin and Hobbs” cartoon, a hokey spaceship, kids’ drawings. (You would put these on the refrigerator, but she puts them on her skin.) A mural on her back is now blurring with age. She also has a huge multicolored blob on her shoulder – one tattoo covering an older one that is covering one older than that. It looks as if Walt Disney had an accident.
You don’t stop loving a child just because she’s done something stupid. Her body belongs to her, not to me. But I can’t look at her without the feeling that my perfect gift has been desecrated. And this won’t heal.
