Within My Head There Arose Such a Clatter

T'was the night before the day after Christmas and my daughter is getting a tattoo tomorrow. It's her second one in less than twelve months.

I'm sitting on the floor of a bathroom using the closed lid of the toilet for my writing surface. The notebook paper I scribble on is damp and soft from the humidity of the warm bath I just had.

When my three kids were growing up I tried to be careful about those boy/girl double standard things. The most glaring of which was the common cultural, yet old school thinking that girls should wait to have sex, but that for boys, having adolescent sex is a right of passage. The flaw of this thinking is so blatant that it's hard to state aloud with out chuckling. Such a laughable bias.

But I have an overt bias of my own, when it comes to tattoos. My sons can get as many tattoos as they wish and it doesn't seem to hurt my soul. It may perplex me but not in a sad way.

My oldest boy has three tattoos that I know of. I'm fine with this. In fact maybe part of me, appreciates his wanting to express himself in a relatively, kinda sorta artistic manner.

My middle offspring will probably never have a tattoo. Not because he feels strongly about the principle of the thing, but because he feels strongly about staying as far away from needles as possible. I'm good with that too. Do what's best for you, I say.

My daughter is my youngest. She will be nineteen in a few weeks. She got her first tattoo just a few hours after she turned eighteen. I went with her for the first thirty minutes or so. Then I left. Devastated might not be a strong enough word for what I felt.

The design of her first tattoo is pretty and I appreciate the symbolism it has for her. The thought she put behind it. But that doesn't mean I wanted it on her skin permanently...forever and ever and ever.

But over time I thought I had come to terms with it. Okay, she has a tattoo. Silently I hoped desperately that this one would be enough for her. A few months after her first one she started talking about another one. Where she would get it, what it would say or what it would look like. These details changed from one conversation to the next and so I just hoped, crossed my fingers and burned incense to the god of porcelain skin that it wouldn't happen. Please, please, please......

As the year went by it began to sound more certain. My stomach hurt more each time the topic came up. I told her on more than one occasion that in my opinion one tattoo for her was plenty. Something like "....IN THE NAME OF ALL THINGS HOLY...."

Tomorrow is the day. I don't like it. Before I crawled into my bed for the night, I went to her and said "Before you do this, would you do one thing for me?" "Yes, of course," she said. "DON'T DO IT!" I wailed.

Actually what I said is "Before you go to bed tonight, go stand in front of a mirror, pull your shirt off and look at the area of skin you're thinking of getting tattooed. Look at your beautiful perfect skin. Because if you do this, it will never be the same. Ever," I whimpered.

I began this post the night before....now we are a few days post tattoo. I was actually sick to my stomach about the whole thing. I thought if I started talking about it, I might throw up.

I can't figure this out. Why is this such a big deal to me? Why is there a difference between how I feel about my boys v. my girl getting a tattoo? I thought about this aloud and discovered maybe it's a vanity thing. I was so surprised by this possibility. Was I vain about her beauty? When I spoke of this, it felt like there might be something to it.

She is strikingly beautiful. Especially when she's not being a meany to her mom. She is tall and thin. Dark features, dark hair. Her skin is pale porcelain, like Nicole Kidman or Scarlett O'Hara. At a few different social functions over the years people have come up to me (and sadly her) and said that she should model. One woman tried to give her the card of someone who might know someone who might be an agent or something. I threw myself in front of that person, grabbed the card out of her hand and crammed it into my mouth, chewing furiously. (This is topic for another post, another day.)

I never thought of myself as a beautiful girl. I never carried myself as a beautiful girl. I was always the clever one, the witty, funny, smart (ass) one. I have always had a healthy capacity to make people laugh and smile and enjoy themselves. But I've never been the 'pretty' girl. I grew up wishing I were. Envying, hating those pretty girls. I always wanted to be a stunning beauty.

So when I had this gorgeous daughter born to me, I celebrated her beauty. I held it up in festive gratitude. Like somehow this beauty belonged to me, once removed.

I stood a little speechless as this concept occurred to me and as the words came out of my mouth, without premeditation. "Maybe," I said, "it's like the father who never got to finish high school because he had to go to work in the coal mines and his only dream is that his son graduate from college and become a doctor or lawyer. Anything but a coal miner." But instead of it being the son's dream, it's really only the father's.

Maybe this is me. Maybe I'm hanging onto a superficial, vain cosmetic rope where she's concerned. This feels terrible. I see her inner beauty, I see her magic side, her shiny heart. Why would I get so twisted up in her outward appearance?

Living vicariously. Not what it's cracked up to be.....