Ink.

My mom hated the idea of me getting a tattoo. She never understood why I needed one. When it came down to getting my first tattoo though, she didn't try to dissuade me. Her attitude was to suggest places where I could alternately hide it or show it, and to remind me that tattoos are forever...so it better damn well mean something.

It's been a couple years since I got my first tat, and I don't regret it. It meant a lot to me, and it was well thought out. Sometimes I tell people that I have a sparrow because sparrows can always find their way home, sometimes I don't. It was originally a sailor's tattoo, and my mark as a wanderer is personal. Such descriptions or explanations are subject to my mood, which is mercurial at best.

What neither my mother nor I expected was the significance growing with time. My tat is an integral part of my story and the sparrow is a character that keeps showing up.

When my friend was diagnosed with a brain tumor, his family started a blog to catalogue his journey through sickness and health. they stopped the blog not long after he died, but there was one last entry on the day of the funeral. It was written by his father, who woke up not knowing how he was going to get thorugh the day, not knowing how he could bury his son. He wronte that he heard a chirpy little bird outside his window, a sparrow's spring call in the middle of February. He said he knew then that was Daniel's parting gift, and that he would be able to go on.

So yes, my tattoos mean something. Every day they mean more than the day before.