Indelible Ink

Owen now has three tattoos, with another one scheduled for November. These are not discreet tattoos; they do not nestle around his ankle bone and wink from behind his shoulderblades. These are more like Bette Midler. They strut across the stage and belt out brassy show tunes.

"Slow down," I tell him. "You're 19. You've got a lot of years left and only a finite amount of flesh."

He's 19. He ignores me.

I want to shake him. I want to make him see reason. I want him to think ahead. I want him to consider the consequences. But much of the time, I just want to be him.

Once when Owen was in middle school, he asked me to proofread an English paper he had just finished. It was a good paper, and I told him so. I also suggested a number of ways he could improve it. He looked hard at me.
"The paper's good, right?"
"Yes, absolutely, I'm just--"
"Good enough to get a B?"
"Yes, definitely, probably an A, in fact, but it wouldn't be that much more work to just--"
He grinned and shook his head.
"I'm good," he said, and turned back to the PETA website.
I wanted to shake him. I wanted to make him see reason, to think ahead, to consider the consequences, to understand the importance of pushing and striving and setting high goals and achieving excellence and. . . and. . . dammit, mostly I just wanted to be him. To be so comfortable in my own skin that I could take a B on something I didn't care much about so I could spend time on what I thought really mattered.

I cannot imagine being so comfortable in my own skin that I could decorate it with permanent ink. I have never been good with permanence. I hate making choices of any kind, let alone lasting ones. What if I get it wrong? And then it's permanently wrong? I need to know there's a way to erase or at least revise what I have done; I need a Plan B. When Owen was about two weeks old, it hit me that for the first time in my life, I had no Plan B, that no matter what happened to him, I would always be his mother. Always. I broke down sobbing. I sat in the tub, shaking and gasping and crying, knowing I was not good enough for this, terror-stricken that I had dared do something so indelible.

In the years since, motherhood has brought me great wonder and unmatchable pleasure and immense satisfaction. Yet that leap into permanence has not taught me to to embrace decision-making and lasting choices. The terror of getting it all wrong remains. And so, I watch enviously and Owen grins. The needle bites his skin and inscribes it with indelible ink. He says, "I'm good."