tattoos | Nana's Whimsies

It’s a Boy! Or a Girl! Or Both!
Tuesday morning when I headed out by foot to Basha’s, I noticed something different about Mama Mockingbird in our tree out front. When I looked harder, I saw her, but I also saw another set of eyes. A baby mockingbird! If you look really carefully, there might be another set of eyes as well.

And this is when the drama begins. Mama M will feed the birds for a bit, but at some point she is going to force them to leave the nest. The cats/snakes/coyotes are eagerly awaiting that day. In the words of my son Court when asked if he wanted to go on a nature hike when he was about 7 years old, “I hate nature.”

And Here’s Why I Don’t Really Hate Nature
Bill and I went for a walk at nearby Red Mountain Park Monday morning. Red Mountain Park is lovely. There is a good-sized pond stocked with fish, and it is widely used. There is a nice playground for children. And there is a sidewalk that goes completely around the park that is 8/10ths of a mile around. Three laps nearly equal two-and-a-half miles in case you can’t do math. We saw the cutest thing ever. We saw a real Mother Goose, her beloved mate-for-life, and their goslings, somewhere in the neighborhood of eight or so. I am not Ansel Adams (though, in my defense, I’m using a crappy phone camera and not a cool and groovy camera with a fancy dancy lens), but you can kind of see the little goslings being led and followed by Mother and Father. You can see them all a bit better in the second photo. I wonder which was the female and which was the male.

Now I Call This Huevos
I have mentioned before that there is a difference between the Mexican food they serve here and that which they serve in Colorado. Green chili is not a thing here. Chile verde, yes. Green chili with pork, not so much. When we were in Denver recently, we had breakfast at my favorite place for green chili in Denver – Santiago’s. They are renowned for their hot green chili. Normally, when I order a smothered burrito, I ask for half & half – half hot and half medium. Because I had been missing green chili so much, I ordered all of it hot. Oh. My. Heavens. It was H.O.T. indeed. But delicious. I ate every bite. My stomach spoke to me later and said, “Why oh why did you think this was a good idea?”

Sailing
I have a friend visiting from Denver. To show off our beautiful area, we drove to Saguaro Lake yesterday afternoon. That is really one of my favorite drives ever. Our plan was to eat sandwiches at one of the picnic areas, and then return home. At the last minute, we decided to take the lake cruise on the Desert Belle. We were so glad we did. It was pretty and we all enjoyed it very much.

I Have Croissant on My Back
As you know, I accompanied Bill Saturday when he enjoyed his NASCAR experience. As he awaited his ride, I sat amongst the other people who were watching their loved one or perhaps awaiting their own turn. There was a young man sitting with his girlfriend/wife waiting to drive one of the NASCARs. As I glanced at him, I saw the word Bagel tattooed onto his neck. I looked at it several times, all the time wondering why anyone would get the word Bagel tattooed onto their neck. Was he a baker? Did he run a Jewish deli? Did he simply like bagels so much that he wanted the word permanently placed on the neck where he could publicly declare his love of this chewy breakfast treat? Finally, I realized that the word was not Bagel; instead it was Angel.

You won’t believe me at first, but look at the this photo and you will see that I am right.

Now, arguably, it makes no sense to have the word Angel – or any other word, for that matter – tattooed permanently onto one’s neck, but I must admit it gave me some relief when I realized my mistake. Angel, next time you consider a tattoo, ask them not to make the curlicue on the A. And enjoy your bagel.

Ciao!

So one day about 15 or 16 years ago or so, Court and Bill and I were having lunch at Jen’s house. It was Mother’s Day. Court was a sophomore at Colorado State. We were talking about silly things we do as kids.

“So Son,” I said to Court, “do you have any tattoos anywhere on your body?”

I fully expected – in fact, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind – that he would say, “Of course not Mom. What do you think I am, some sort of thug?”

Instead, much to my surprise, he got a panicked look on his face, the look he gets when he doesn’t know whether to tell the truth or lie. Court’s never been a great liar. He tends to blink a lot, thereby giving himself away.

This time, however, he was forced to tell the truth. He admitted he had gotten a tattoo somewhere around the first or second week of his freshman year. I had never dreamed he had a tattoo.

I say he was forced to tell the truth because, in fact, Bill knew about the tattoo. The summer between his freshman and sophomore year, Court was out mowing our lawn with his shirt off while I was at work. Bill noticed the tattoo and asked Court about it when he came inside.

“When did you get the tattoo?” Bill asked him.

“What tattoo?” Court asked. Blink, blink, blink.

“Court, I saw you out back with your shirt off and I saw the tattoo,” Bill said. “When did you get it?”

Court finally acknowledged the tattoo, and asked Bill not to say anything to me. Bill never said a word, keeping his word to his stepson. I will tell you, however, he was having a world of fun as this conversation progressed.

Court showed me the tattoo, which was on his bicep, and the funniest thing about the whole tattoo business is that the tattoo he chose was praying hands. Ha. My son, the non-church goer, with permanent praying hands on his bicep.

I talked about it with him later, and expressed my concern that it would present a bad image in the future. But Court gave me food for thought. He noted that while tattoos were rare amongst my age group, they were commonplace among his generation and therefore it would never be held against him. What he said made sense. It is true, in fact, that I can only think of a handful of adults of his generation or younger with no tattoos whatsoever.

I was thinking about this the other day when I saw two young teenaged girls (maybe early 20s) walking together in the grocery store parking lot. Both were tattooed, and one girl’s entire arm was tattooed. They looked like totally innocent, suburban girls, not the heavily tattooed kind. Then I remembered that my lovely niece Jessie – a perfectly normal young woman studying to be an environmental engineer – has several tattoos. So, again, she is proving Court’s point that tattoos are part of life in the 21^st century…..

…..as indicated by the tattoos on the back legs of a woman I recently saw at Starbucks. Yoiks. This photo, by the way, is not of the actual legs, but something I found on the internet as I was too taken aback at the sight of the woman’s legs to remember to take a photo. The tattoo, however, is identical.

Despite Court’s acclamation that tattoos are here to stay, I can’t help but think that someday this young woman will wish she didn’t have laces up the back of her legs. Perhaps when she is 85 and the laces are sagging and appear to be untied.

But what do I know? I, for one, haven’t a single tattoo on my body.

Nana's Whimsies

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