flight of the swallow
I got a tattoo done this weekend. I have two beautiful lightly-blue barn swallows that fly between my shoulder blades. I chose them after I read about what swallow tattoos signified in Navy tattoo lore, about how since swallows migrate, they represent home and returning home. I think a lot about home. My husband is far away, deployed with the Army, and our home feels empty without him. I think of my Mom and sisters, too far away from where I sit now. My home here, with the new family of friends that grew up around me to help with the pain of being separated from the white farmhouse and parents that will always be "home" in my head, even after a decade away from those clotheslines. I think of a certain friend that became my big sister in those hard years of college, my home for several identity-making years, who always feels like home when I see her. Lifelines of friends that hold a little bit of you from other times and places that you used to call home, many of whom are far away and out of touch. Those swallows are all of them to me, and my throat is tight with missing them. Even the little ache of the new tattoo feels like homesickness. I will miss that reminder when it is healed over.
When you get a tattoo, you are supposed to wash it several times that first day with a mild, soothing bar soap, nothing antibacterial, no harsh washcloth, just your fingers tracing the lines over and over. I thought at first that I would not be able to take care of it, that I couldn't reach it. But as I pushed my muscles, one arm up over my shoulder and the other twisted backwards behind my back, my fingers can touch. I traced the entire length of my back with sudsy, soft fingers, light and soothing and it seemed important to me that I could do that. That I could do it myself. Like, You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours... but by myself. Meditatively, over and over, my fingers meeting and touching, circling and caring, a sort of circle in itself. A little zen love lesson, rubbing my own back like a mother does to a child that needs comfort. It seems important, somehow.
When I was at home, I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It
When you get a tattoo, you are supposed to wash it several times that first day with a mild, soothing bar soap, nothing antibacterial, no harsh washcloth, just your fingers tracing the lines over and over. I thought at first that I would not be able to take care of it, that I couldn't reach it. But as I pushed my muscles, one arm up over my shoulder and the other twisted backwards behind my back, my fingers can touch. I traced the entire length of my back with sudsy, soft fingers, light and soothing and it seemed important to me that I could do that. That I could do it myself. Like, You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours... but by myself. Meditatively, over and over, my fingers meeting and touching, circling and caring, a sort of circle in itself. A little zen love lesson, rubbing my own back like a mother does to a child that needs comfort. It seems important, somehow.
When I was at home, I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It