The Art of the Body

This is true: as a little kid every night when my Mom would kiss me goodnight, she would take my cheek and say, "Goodnight. Don't do drugs. Don't pluck your eyebrows. No tattoos." This started at a time when I barely understood what any of those things were. I'm certain on her deathbed many years from now I will look down on her, take her cheek, and she will still whisper those same words to me again. Those three lessons seem to be the values she holds on high over all other wisdom a parent could pass down to a child. Only three "Thou Shalt Not" Commandments passed down from my mother to ensure-- in her mind-- a safe, productive life.

This, of course, is not how life works. I understand this now as an adult. And while I've flunked the first two already without the world crashing down, for some eerie reason I haven't been able to shake my mom's words whenever I think of breaking her last commandment. Anytime I see a tattoo parlor while walking down the street, I first feel my mother's pinch on my cheek.

But second, I think of the world "parlor." I think of how funny it is to still call a place where you get a tattoo something so old-timey. I think of the meaning of the word, being "a sitting room in a private house" and immediately am drawn closer to the idea. The act is so private, so personal. For no one else except for the residents of that 'house.'

For someone without a drop of ink on their body, I adore tattoos. I can't help but be that person that has to ask the meaning of someone's tattoo when I meet them. Even if the answer is "Nothing. It's meaningless." I still love it like I love getting lost in a foreign town, wandering down a street and stumbling upon an old, abandoned cathedral. The 'meaning' has moved on decades ago but the stained glass art is still there, open for adoration.

I saw many of these broken-down churches during daily walks while studying abroad in England years ago. There's a billion of them, with collapsing roofs and ivy-covered gravestones. I'd like to think of what would be written on my gravestone. And then I'd think about what I'd write on me.

One evening on a walk, I stupidly decided to hop a gate to check out this remote old church building around sunset. But by the time I hopped back out, it was after dark and suddenly... I couldn't remember what street I was on. Or where I was exactly to begin with. Or where the monastery I was staying at was located.

I wandered for hours through the old streets at night, completed panicked. I had brought no cellphone, no wallet, no common sense whatsoever. People with no homes at all drifted up to me wondering where mine was. Every turn I took I thought for sure would at least lead me back to that church, or to an open diner... convenience store... petrol station...anywhere I could stop inside and ask for help. Eventually, after hours of holding my freezing, shaking body and running down nameless streets, I found a working payphone, called the police, and got a taxi to pick me up. Apparently I had walked eight miles in the opposite direction.

When the taxi took me home and pulled to a stop, I couldn't help but see the monastery and think the word "sanctuary." Sanctuary. I looked up synonyms of the word. Harbor. Haven. Hideaway. Asylum.

Isn't my body all of these things in one? While drugs (in moderation...) and plucked eyebrows and tattoos won't make you any more susceptible to the misfortunes of the world than a regular sober, hairier, non-inked person is, I think the advice I might tell my daughter in bed to help them get through life a bit easier will be instead, "Take care of your body. Honor your body. Treat it as your sanctuary."

So that's what my first tattoo is going to be: the word sanctuary padded on the sole of my foot. Done in a nice, private parlor. It's the best way I can think to honor my body, and to thank my mom for the body she gave me.

Now I just need to get my mom to write down the word so I can get it done in her handwriting without her realizing what it's for...