Marked woman

I'm not sure why it surprises me to know this about myself, but I would love to get a tattoo. Perhaps it's that outwardly I'm rather conservative: wearing plain colored shirts and pants more often than printed *anything*; rarely wear jewelry even though I love it (just won a necklace at eBay and am bidding on another). So a tattoo seems to be the anti-me.

However, I've wanted one for some time. My brother is nine years younger than me and I remember that I wanted one a few years before he got his, the day he turned eighteen. He came home with his comedy/tragedy masks (beautiful work, BTW) and I admired it, and secretly wished I had nerve enough to get one.

I considered it once, when I was in Toronto on a college trip... at that time I'd have gotten something musical, like a G-clef or eighth note. Nothing big or fancy, I always thought, just something small.

Once I met G, I recall the conversation where he told me that he didn't like tattoos on women. At that point in time, tattoos were not the commonplace thing they are now, and so I could kind of see his point; when we went to rock concerts and saw what young people would now call "old-school" tats on women that were in their sixties, I thought, "yeah, I guess they don't always look that great." So we made kind of a pact, of sorts: he said he'd always thought about shaving his head, which I told him I didn't want him to do (I love his hair) but he said he'd only do it if I got a tattoo. We were joking, mostly, calling it our relationship's version of "mutually assured destruction."

Over the years, though, my desire to get a tattoo never waned. I developed a fascination with all things Irish/Celtic and decided that *if* I were ever to get one, I'd choose something inspired by the book of Kells. To keep from feeling as though I was missing out by not getting one, I kept the thought in the back of my head that I wouldn't be all that crazy about the pain/blood aspect. I'd get temporary tattoos applied when I'd go to festivals or concerts and that generally kept me satisfied. At one point I decided that I was "too old" to get one, anyway.

Then, two summers ago, I went to a Counting Crows concert with G and two of my co-workers. While there was no tattoo booth at the concert there *was* a piercer, and on a dare of sorts another coworker and I said we'd get our navels pierced if the other coworker got her nose pierced, since she really wanted to do it. (She didn't realize that she couldn't just start with a cute little rhinestone stud, though, and although she left with a nose ring she took hers out a few days later.) I remember thinking that the piercing didn't hurt as much as I'd imagined it would, until I stood up from the chair and felt as though I was going to faint. I recovered quickly enough, thankfully, but that kind of put the fear back into me that I'd never be able to stand the pain of getting a tattoo. (Incidentally, I wasn't able to keep my navel piercing, as it got infected and I had to remove it, but I think about redo-ing it, if I ever get skinny again. More on that another posting.)

So, the dream of having a tattoo was put away. Until recently. I was looking up information about "Elvish" after *finally* watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and in so doing came upon a tattoo site that not only did Elvish tattoo designs, they did Celtic designs. And there, I found this:



It's a Celtic motherhood knot. While this person hadn't done so, I found other pictures where the dots were colorized to represent birthstones of children. More than anything, I find myself wanting one of these with a dot on each side, to represent the children that could have been.

I could probably do just as well by finding some way to get this converted into a pendant or other type of "wearable" piece. There's a thousand reasons why I shouldn't get one, most of all that it's silly, really; I am still not the type to get a tattoo.

I'll keep telling myself that until I believe it.