Permanence

My 22-year-old son got his first tattoo. He didn’t tell me about it, of course. We were just chatting and laughing over dinner, and mid-sentence I saw it and oh! I caught my breath in my heart.

I mean, I knew this moment would probably arrive. I knew at least one of my children was likely to succumb to the fascination of the ink. I just didn’t know it would be today.

I couldn’t speak at first. I couldn’t help but think that his skin is my skin is now no longer my skin and it never really was and I know that but I gave him that skin from my skin. My own. Skin.

The tattoo is beautifully rendered. He said he paid good money to have it done well, and it’s truly mesmerizing. Etched on his upper left arm, just behind his line of sight it is a swallow in full flight with layered feathers of outstretched wings. It’s a swallow because he is from San Juan Capistrano. That gave me some solace; he is proud of his sweet hometown. Imagine being that proud of where you come from. He will travel the far reaches of the globe, and he will always be from this sweet hometown. The swallows always come back to San Juan Capistrano. They always come home.

In their toddler and early elementary school years, I referred to my children as my skin babies. These are the years they needed to touch me all the time: cheek to cheek, hand to torso, hand to hair, head to hip, arms always outstretched, sleeping in the bed, skin touching skin. They gradually wander further and further outside your radius, of course. Then one day, they let go of your hand to run off and play and you don’t know it was the last time they would reach for your skin.

My now 22-year-old, ironically, was never a physically affectionate child. He never liked being on my hip for long; he would snuggle in my lap for only a moment and only to appease me. On the first day of kindergarten, he simply turned around and said, “Bye Mom” and proceeded into the classroom like a well-adjusted little gentleman. (His sister, by contrast, was a white-knuckled door jamb seizer on the first day of kindergarten. The teacher literally had to pry her fingers away and give me the stare down that ordered me to walk away.)  But my eldest son just said, “Bye Mom” and walked through the portal of his life. He was an old soul from the first. He was always a man onto his own. His own. Skin.

A swallow in full flight. Imagine being that proud of where you come from. Imagine.