for the longest time, i resisted getting a tattoo. there was a brief stint in college when i constantly doodled dogwood blossoms and imagined one artfully inked on my ankel or just below the hairline on the back of my neck. but like all symbols that have illumined my path, after its debut as The Center of Unspoken Meaning in my life, the dogwood blossom returned to work at her day job as a bit of earthly matter charged to participate in an ordinary sort of beauty. and i moved on to the sanskrit word for OM, or the mayan cross, or something equally evocative and deep.

image from dianeplus5.blogspot.com

i saw the movie eat, pray, love last week, which reminded me of one of my favorite lines in the book by elizabeth gilbert. in the book, liz is lamenting to her sister that she is feeling reluctant about starting a family. she is trying to discern whether to heed or disregard this ambivalence when her sister says,

“having a baby is like getting a tattoo… ON YOUR FACE. you really need to be certain it’s what you want before you commit.”

it’s true. having a baby is an immediate, noticeable, and permanent identity change. i got my first tattoo in the summer of 2006, at which point i traded things like free time and personal space for an unshakable sense of love and awe and sleep deprivation. my second tattoo came in the winter of 2009, which is when i traded the last vestiges of order in my life for complete chaos, the last shard of my remaining vanity for a brown magic marker and a little road trip entertainment (see above), and my already-full-heart for an impossibly deeper sort of love. inasmuch as there is divinity in everything and everyone (and i believe there is) my children really are the reorienting, Centers of Unspoken Meaning in my life. i don’t want to completely lose my identity in them, and i still treasure the meaning found in all of the world’s symbols. but i have committed myself to shaping and being shaped by these little beings. i might as well ride with them into the depths and usher them into the heights of life. this privelege is what makes such sacrifice worth it.

but taking the parenting plunge yields yet another reward, one that i am just recently beginning to recognize. the indigo girls speak of it in their song, get out the map:

“with every lesson learned a line upon your beautiful face/we’ll amuse ourselves one day with these memories we’ll trace.”

perhaps i am also trading worry and wrinkles for the sweetest of memories… the way the monkey cannot say his R’s, the spring of their curls, the first day the bird said, “hi, mama,” when i went to get him from his crib, our july hikes through the mountains with the monkey at my side and the bird in my pack.

my face is now its own geography of commitment and lessons learned, sleepless nights and smile lines, baby fingernail scratches and sloppy toddler kisses. now i’m not much different than the dogwood blossom, a bit of earthly matter whose day job is to participate in an ordinary sort of beauty. ahh, but what an extraordinary ride this is turning out to be!