Scarred By Love

At first glance, my demographic can be sized up pretty quickly - middle class, suburban, modest, white woman. Labels have always defined me. But as Kierkegaard said, "once you label me, you negate me." I think that's why I love my tattoo.

My crowd would assume I must have had a roaring drunk moment in my youth, or that I am a loose woman prone to impulsiveness, not giving much thought to permanence.

But my tattoo is not a novelty. It is holy ground. It was etched by one worth dying for; it symbolizes one worth living for. It hails a four year old child, my grandson Parker, who died two years ago from a tragic fall from a two story window.

My son and I were stunned in grief. I needed a way to touch that place; to touch it together with him. We had danced around his profession, a tattoo artist. I had come to accept his artistry and vocational community, but I hadn't yet found a way to embrace it that said, "bless you my son."

A few days after Parker's death, steeped in sorrow, aching the loss of my grandchild and the brokenness of my son, I found the touching place. Stroking the inside of my wrist, I knew I had found the place to meet my son, the place to connect in a combination of ink, tears, and hearts.

He designed it for me; he etched it as we clung together in love and loss, remembering a precious little boy who giggled his way into our lives and left his mark in our souls.

Yes; I am scarred with an eternal stain - the stain of Holy love.

Bless you my son(s).

Starbucks Bible Babe

I don't know what it is that seizes a woman in perfectly rational moments to go from humming along with a contented universe to a hyperventilating, sobbing, tissue-twisting heap of panicked mush.

I'm not talking about hormonal meltdowns. I'm talking about the kind of thing Nora Ephron points out in her book titled, I Feel Bad About My Neck, lamenting her foreign crepe-y-ness, or what Anne Lamott writes about in her Traveling Mercies chapter she titled "The Aunties," referring to her billowing thighs as ever present relations she must come to love. What I'm talking about is the much discussed issue of female self-acceptance and how it's entrenched to an impossible cultural norm shaped by youth and beauty.

Women cannot just "BE." We know this. That's why we exercise, tweeze, manicure, attach, implant, wax, shave, polish, perm, color, cut, blow-dry, moisturize, and labor over whether to buy the skinny jeans or stick with the good ol' standard cut.  We have a cosmetic bag chock full of current products, a drawer of half-used lipsticks, and a shoebox crammed under the bathroom sink of dried-out who knows what as back-ups. We DO NOT throw away makeup, and God forbid we run out of mascara. And this is the modest woman I'm describing. I haven't even begun to mention the women who have it down to an Oprah-science on what push-up bra goes with what sweater and why you need twelve different hair-brushes for the perfect comb-out.

Yes, I know; some women are liberated from such nonsense, are not held hostage to a corporate glamour image minimizing the true beauty of what it means to be "woman." But even so, there's not a woman alive that doesn't say when she glances at herself in the mirror either hmmmm, not bad, or hmmmm, I gotta do something about that. There is some sort of slide-rule of "o.k.-ness" every woman uses and gets from somewhere. From time to time we may have to adjust the standard a bit, but none the less, it's always lurking.

And so it was, one Sunday morning as I put myself together. I was feeling pretty good with what I had to work with that day. After all, I had lost about thirty pounds, had treated myself to few new outfits, and had come to sort of like my recent haircut I had tried to sass up a bit, even though I was having a hard time getting the hang of this gel-goo stuff that's supposed to help with the sass. I gave myself a last pat down as I slipped on my new trendy jacket and had one of those, hmmmm, not bad moments.

And this was an accomplishment to have a hmmmm, not bad moment. Not because I had arrived at some sort of acceptable standard, but because, on the contrary, I was working hard to let go of the standard. I was going to like what I saw, to accept what was, regardless. This was a part of maturity, right? I was no longer a young something or other; I was a baby-boomer. And baby-boomers were starting to droop, spread, and wrinkle. Even when I WAS a young something or other I couldn't live up to the standard, so why the heck should I be tangled up in it now? So on that note, I gave myself a firm nod of approval and strode out the door to meet my family at Starbucks after a little spiritual reinforcement at church. I WAS ok; yes, I was.

And I was still ok, nooked into a cozy Starbucks corner sipping my latte, chatting it up, when out of the corner of my eye I spied the most drop-dead gorgeous, flat-out, suck your breath away blonde step into Starbucks. She looked like she belonged on the arm of Hugh Hefner, her long platinum tresses wafting in the breeze as she opened the door, her sun-kissed face full of pout and whisper. She was tall and willowy, and her rabbit-fur boots with dangling puff-balls only accentuated dancer's legs clad in leather jeans so tight you could not miss one inch of what the good Lord gave her. Her matching fur vest, stretched over a taut pink tee, in no way could disguise boobs way out to God knows where. As soon as she glided across the threshold it was like some kind of ancient hypnotic curse exercised its power - "when in the presence of this kind of beauty, you SHALL behold and be in awe." Every eye turned in her direction as she walked up to the counter, and with each step you could feel every woman's esteem collapse like a wilted balloon.

It was like being on the inside of a barometer, the air pressure, measured in strokes of confidence, dropping with each female internal self-check. You could feel it as one woman ran her fingers across her bangs to puff them up a bit; as another subtly shifted her weight from one dimply hip to another in her chair; as another sucked in her belly and straightened her back....as we all remembered our last vision of ourselves in the mirror that morning. Hard as I tried I could not, along with everyone else, keep my eyes focused elsewhere for more than 16 seconds without checking her out again. And, with each sneak-peek I felt myself chafe.

I watched her reach into her back pocket and there, hugging the curve of her midriff, teasing just above her toned butt cheek was a rose-wrapped Harley Davidson tattoo; I rolled my eyes. Well of course, I slathered; why not? A buxom, blonde, biker-babe astride a hunkin' piece of growling metal. Every man's dream. As she walked over to a table smack-dab in the middle of the room, I had her pegged with each flounce of her dangling rabbit-fur puff-balls: biker-babe; bunny-biker-babe; Playboy-bunny-biker-babe; ditzy-Playboy-bunny-biker-babe. I was deeply mired in character assassination and a lavish righting of justice when she sat down, arranged her coffee and cookie, leaned over her suede bag and pulled out, of all things, a rhinestone and pink fur-covered BIBLE. She plopped it open on the table and out popped a matching bookmark; a sparkly, furry, pink puff-ball swinging back and forth on its ribbon over the table edge like a final punctuation.

This was too much. Now I was steamed. I mean, give me a break, God; and by now I was having a direct, ticked-off conversation with the Almighty. You have to understand; I like God. In fact I have come to love God and God-stuff, but it has taken me a long time to see how much God loves me, and a whole lot longer to love myself. Now, here was the impossible standard glaring at me, mocking me in all its pink puff-ball power, teasing me with, of all things, a biblical seal, a bling-encrusted biblical seal. I felt betrayed. How could You, God? How could You rub it in my face?

And that's when I could feel the Nora Ephron, Anne Lamott thing happen; could feel age like water rising; could feel every wad of cellulite, every jot of underarm flab, every eye wrinkle scream it was NOT a laugh line but a full blown crow's foot. Grace and mercy seemed to ebb away; panic clawed up my spine. Oh god, I knew there was no point in defying age, but I had hoped there could be a way to disentangle this impossible standard from the act of aging. I couldn't believe how fragile and snarled up I still was; I was going to choke on this from here to eternity. Good Lord, where was a paper bag? I needed oxygen; I was about to keel. I got up from my nook and headed to the Ladies Room. Part of me wanted to slink my way along the room's edge and part of me wanted to march across the middle, pass straight through enemy territory so close I could smell those Harley roses. By the time I reached the restroom I knew I needed a face-off, or a therapist.

Washing my hands in the sink, I fussed. I fussed with my attitude; I fussed with my hair; I fussed with how ridiculous all this was and fretted about how in the world was I going to rid myself of this preening-shackle, when a flash of florescent green caught my eye in the mirror. Looking closer, I could see that something was hanging from the armpit of my new trendy jacket that had validated me that morning, made me feel oh so adorable. Lifting my arm, groping around with my hand I could feel the sharp stabs of cardboard and a strand of nylon thread; I ripped it free. Oh god, it was the sales tag, flashing in multi-stickered discounted neon! It had been flapping and bobbing all morning as I had walked into church, waved to friends across the parking lot, gave hugs, reached for coffee.....forged across the Starbucks' bunny abyss.

I stared at myself in the mirror. It was hopeless. I was hopeless. No matter how hard I might pretend it wasn't so, or tried to keep up, the impossible standard would always be there eluding me; it was not going away, and I would always have sales tags dangling from my underarms.

I stood there letting that sink in.

And as I did, I started to laugh - a luscious, flat-out I'm either going crazy or I'm-being-set-free howl like a prayer; a chortle of gratitude; a wondrous hurrah. How it is that truth can slice a moment and split it open, I'll never know, but somehow it does.

I may not exactly understand how it is that a woman gets bogged down into quicksands of self-defeat, gets snared into marshlands sucking at her soul, but I do know what it is that gets her back, that delivers her up. It is the poetry of God. It is the cosmic, raucous throw-your-head-back laugh that knows, despite it all, the bottom line is always the beauty of mercy, the beauty of love. It is to face down irony with a flush of grace and acceptance. In the mirror God had me; trumped me in the poetry of a price tag.

I patted my moist cheeks dry, touched up my lipstick, rearranged my bangs and took a deep breath. Yes, those were lovely crow's feet; yes, I know - I was not a bunny-ized version of Starbuck's babe-ness, I was a version of my own beauty and truth.

And with that, I took one last, gentle took in the mirror, smiled and said..... Amen, as I turned and walked back into the world of babe-ness, triumphant in my moment of love and grace and mercy.....oh yes, lots and lots of mercy.

Trying Out A New Look

Kinda like getting a new hair style.............every once in a while, you just have to. This wasn't my favorite template, but it was in the COOL category and I could still read the lettering without my glasses. Interesting juxtaposition - COOL and granny glasses...........ah, well.