Tuesday Slice: Restless

I am aching a bit for change.  Maybe it's the Gemini Full Moon arriving tomorrow, or Winter Solstice in a week, or the pretty new 2017 planner and goal setting workbook that's waiting to be filled in that's prompting me to think long and hard about the state of my life, my home, my relationships.

As I approach my fifty-first birthday, I don't feel like I'm at the top of the hill, about to roll down; I'm only halfway up the mountain I've been climbing for the last fifty years.  When I reach the top, I want to be free of anything weighing me down.  I want to fly off that peak. 

It's got to begin with the physical clutter.  I've always been a start-at-the-bottom kind of person when it comes to housekeeping.  Clean the floor when it gets sticky, clean the desk when I don't have room to navigate the computer mouse, clean the table when I don't have a place for my plate.  It's been my unending, unmet goal each year to purge and clean and simplify.  But now I'm looking at the mess from the perspective of legacy--and this is not what I want to leave my children.

Bad habits must be replaced to be eradicated, so I'm making a list of ways to limit physical clutter.  Purchases of things will be replaced with purchasing experiences. I'm cutting subscriptions to emails touting the next big sale.  Catalogs are being tossed in the recycle bin the same day they arrive in the mail. Book purchases will be put on hold (gasp) while I tackle the mountain of unread books on the coffee table.

By this time next year, I'll be able to see the top of my desk again, the top of the coffee table, navigate the living room and bedroom without stubbing a toe.  I'll feel more connected with people, not things.  I'll make space for what's really important.   

Tuesday Slice: Thinking about inking

I got my first tattoo nine months after my mother's death.

I had planned to get it sooner, but for one reason or another, didn't commit to the idea until just before my 31st birthday.  

I remember the details of that day.  These were the times before internet access, and I had prepared by calling tattoo parlors to check on their weekday hours.  My husband worked evenings and I worked weekends, so I needed to get in before our daughter finished mothers' day out at one-thirty p.m.  There was only one tattoo parlor in the area that opened before noon--our only choice.

My plan was to get a claddagh symbol in honor of my deceased Irish-American mother, but the artist said it would have to be at least four inches in diameter to maintain clarity over the years--and that was far bigger than what I had in mind.  My husband asked if I wanted to leave and come back, but I was bound and determined to walk out of that parlor with a tattoo.  I chose a four-leaf clover from the images pinned to the wall, and within thirty minutes, it was done.

Our daughter had told her preschool teacher what mommy was doing that morning, and several of the teachers wanted a peek at my new ink.  They liked it; my daughter, not so much.  She kept asking if I could wash it off!

******

Eight years later, I decided I needed another tattoo for my 39th birthday, since threes figure heavily in my history.  This time, I took one of my best friends, and she sat by my side in the back room of a repurposed 40's house near campus while I sat with my leg in another tattoo artist's lap.  This time, the Celtic symbol was a bit more sophisticated--a triquetra knot, with a circle entwined in the loops.  The shape has many interpretations:  the Holy Trinity, maiden-mother-crone, even as a symbol for Pisces, my birth sign.  It's my favorite so far.

******

Tonight, I visited yet another tattoo parlor, to begin the process of getting my third, and last, inking.  I've asked for the design to incorporate an owl, a book, and the number fifty-one--the age I'll attain next March, the age of my mother at her passing.  

I want it placed in a location that I can glance at easily, a daily reminder of that invisible line drawn in the sands of my life's hourglass; a circle that lasts but a moment on the day of my fifty-first birthday, erased as the grains of sand continue to fall, expanding my experience past that arbitrary boundary.

Horizon 51.