true love exists and we can be good

Y has a thing about needles. She always has. Over the course of 22 years, she's moved beyond visible freak out in the doctor's office to simply cutting off the circulation in a companion's hand, but still, her needle issue remains. So when she decided to get a tattoo, I knew she had been doing some serious thinking. It turns out that she had -- for a couple of years. She knew the design: one of my dad's painting seals, the vermillion-colored signatures that appear on every traditional Chinese painting. She knew the placement: the inside of her right wrist.

She called early this summer to ask if I would be willing to hold her left hand while she got the tattoo, because she imagined it would smart to get all that needling done.

I heard myself say into the phone, "Maybe I'll get one with you." "Really?" she asked. "Mom's going to get one, too," I heard her tell her sister. "Okay," said T. "I will, too."

It took a lot of planning, working with the seals, photoshopping them into the tidy, tattooable form you see here. We talked and talked, because that's what we do, about which of his many seals to get. Also, Y was worried that T and I hadn't taken years to agonize about it, since she had, so we needed to talk about that.

Because for Y, the tattoo was filled with meaning. For her, she said, the tattoo would be a reminder that true love exists, and that such love was embodied by my parents. Also, she says, the seal is a visible reminder that we are capable of being as good as they were.

For me, it meant a road trip with my daughters and an investment in a fun memory. My tattoo would be a visible reminder that we are capable of fun road trips.

My friend Phuc Tran is a tattoo artist up in Portland, Maine. He is the one who so kindly offered to tattoo nipples for me when mine were lost in the collision with breast cancer. Phuc was the only one we wanted to shepherd us through this experience.

Y was anxious -- had probably been anxious about this for two years, because that's what she does when there is a needle on the horizon, however distant. T volunteered to go first so that Y could see the process from start to finish. Here you can see T lying on the table, having a grand old time getting a tattoo on her ankle.

Seemed like a piece of cake. Y went next, as Phuc suggested it would be good to get hers over with.

The next time I support Y through a painful experience like that, I expect there to be a baby at the end of it. She had a very hard time, with terrible pain.

Poor kid, I thought. Can't take pain. I took another sip of my chai.

Then it was my turn. I hopped cheerfully onto the table and let Phuc shave my hairless ankle.

Well. Hats off to all those people who get more than one tattoo; that's all I can say. It's like, "Tattoo me once, shame on...me. Tattoo me twice, and...you can't tattoo me twice." Isn't that how George Bush put it? First thing he and I agree upon.

But T! What a hero! What a faker! Only when I was getting tattooed did T let on that it had hurt her something fierce. "Really hurts, doesn't it, mom?!" she asked as my eyes bugged out of my head and my jaw unhinged in silent alarm.

T hadn't wanted Y to be any more scared than she already was. She protected her sister by being as calm as possible.

T showed us both that true love exists; that we can be good. And now we have the tattoos to remind us whenever we forget.

it's probably not about the cat

Laura has not been home for two weeks and yesterday I almost got a kitten. Coincidence? My beloved sister Ellen thinks not.

In order to get anything done in life, we've all learned to compartmentalize kittens. It's easy, in general. But if you see one, if it's looking right at you, you have to actively resist the impulse to take it home. Kittens hypnotize you -- you can see them trying. For the vulnerable human, it's like that resisting the impulse to scream thing I wrote about, but more intense.

So when I got an email from someone searching for a home for these abandoned kittens, an impulse began, like a little itchy rash. Which is actually one of the many symptoms I get when I am around cats. But that's beside the point.

The one I'm not going to get, not going to get, Not Going to Get is the one with the white forehead. Yani is thinking of the name Luna, for the moon on her forehead. We would call her Lulu.

Our current Zen Master cat, Juni, could train this new kitten, I'm thinking. Juni would be so happy to have a kitten to take care of! She would take Lulu around the yard, model caution around cars, show her that trees make so much better scratching posts than furniture. Lulu would nestle in the curl of Juni's warm body at night. She would only kill birds under extreme duress. She would be just like Juni, only 14 years younger.

These are the fantasies of the kitten trance I am was in. I did not at any moment in time think it was, in fact, a good idea to get a kitten. But I sent an email saying we were interested in the one that so obviously wants to be our cat. And Yani and I drove off in the general direction of New Britain, where the kitten Sirens were singing.

I said to Yani, "If I could figure out a way of getting the feeling I am looking for, I could resist this kitten impulse." She said, What about a bird? Well, the pet store is right next to the hardware store we were standing in. Let's go see if I have a feeling when I check out the birds. Maybe I am just looking for a feeling.

It was more of a gruesome fantasy than a feeling that came over me as I watched the birds flitter about in their cages: Juni may be a Zen Master, but she can't resist finch tartare. Plus the birds actually seemed to be saying, please don't take me home. Just get me outta here.

We looked at rats, hamsters, mice, gerbils: No way; what's with the tail; hi there, but no; and no thanks, respectively. Yani suggested I might like the hermit crab and tapped on the glass to get its "attention." Har har.

Laura gets home tonight and I'm hoping she can talk me off the Lulu ledge, though in truth talking people into things is more of Laura's thing. She is, after all, the one who followed the sign to "free kittens" and surprised the family with Juni so many years ago.

This morning the kittens' foster dad is down to one kitten: It's Lulu. Could I decide by the end of the day, he asks.

Getting a pet is never just about the pet. I know that. So I'm trying to figure out what it is about, right here, right now. By the end of the day.

Could someone please tie me to the mast?

there's a sweet spot to anonymity, too

As we had long been preparing for, Laura has been staying in New York on weekdays for the past two months or so. We've been doing well with this, all in all. I am holding down the homestead and raising my butternut squash crop. She is out there running a huge school. I am making motor sounds while playing with a balsa wood airplane, and she is running the control tower at JFK. We each have our gifts.

Grocery shopping has been one of the biggest structural changes: I shop for one during the week and for two on the weekends. It takes concentration -- like going from base 10 to the binary system and then back again in arithmetic. Not my strong point. I will say that there has been some overage of romaine and a few emergency banana smoothies.

There are other adjustments: I've taken over the household jobs that once were Laura's, of course. Actually, in some cases I'm foregoing the task altogether. I'm not drinking coffee during the week anymore, since Laura is the one who makes it. When I do have coffee on the weekends (because suddenly there is some), it is like a shot of adrenaline straight up. Coffee is fabulous, wondrous stuff on Saturdays and Sundays.

What is the dog's problem? I wondered early on, before realizing that someone with opposable thumbs maybe should feed him. And I am still trying to figure out if there is a solution to the problem of my side of the sheets being ready for washing when her side is still plenty crisp. I'm not happy with either the over- or the under-laundering solution.

I'm sorry to see Laura drive off on Sunday, but I can get on a chair and stand on my tiptoes and see Friday coming over the horizon, so it's okay. When school started, though, a new feeling took me by surprise. I began to feel like I am missing out on the fun. Cool things happen at school.

One of Laura's advisees, 14-year-old Max, for example, wrote a short piece of music in his music composition course last spring. The teacher asked the Manhattan String Quartet to perform all the students' compositions, and you can hear them by putting sq2012ecfs into your browser. This kind of thing, you've gotta admit, is extremely cool. This is run-of-the-mill cool at Fieldston.

But it's not just happenings and the creative vibe of a school that I am missing. When Laura was at Porter's, my identity was enhanced by being connected to her. Students and faculty would wave to me and greet me because I was the missus of someone well loved in that community. As her tenure there recedes below the opposite horizon of time, I am increasingly anonymous -- just another middle-aged walker passing campus, dragging her starving dog. Students used to greet me with friendly recognition, and now they generally don't see me at all. It's a little bit sad that students no longer care if I see them go behind the AT&T building to smoke. It used to make them nervous, and that was kind of fun.

And since I'm not around Fieldston's campus, I'm anonymous there, too. I don't get the radiant heat that comes with being the principal's spouse. I miss basking in that warmth.

Also there is this: in my profession you make an explicit agreement to keep relationships with clients private. When I run into clients outside the office, I give them a wide berth so they don't need to decide whether to acknowledge me or not. It adds another layer of anonymity.

It's not a problem yet, but I'm tracking this new feeling within me. I think even the hermit up there in the cave kind of liked being known as a hermit. Even the hermit -- who cherished all that alone time -- didn't want to be completely anonymous.

I don't get to be brave very often

That's the thought that entered my mind when I prodded myself to do the tiniest brave thing recently. It took this cognitive nudge to dive into a cold lake after a cold rain: Come on, p. You don't get to be brave very often. 

There are actually lots of opportunities to be brave. More correctly, then: I don't seem to be able to choose to be brave very often. My lack of courage has always troubled me, and I fear that if push were to come to shove, I would freeze when Life most needed me to take courageous action.

I have curiosity in generous amounts, and I possess a fair share of persistence and can-do. These are good qualities to have. I'm not even sure I would trade those two things, if that were the necessary deal, to gain the quality of courage. But I know my flaws, and they haunt me. You want what you lack, and I have always wanted -- above other lacks such as talent and brilliance -- more courage.

While driving in Hartford years ago, I came upon an accident. Someone had apparently just been hit by a car that was perhaps two or three cars ahead of me. I could only see the pedestrian's legs as he lay motionless on the asphalt, and I could see his friend wailing in despair and helplessness. Other pedestrians were gathering. I turned my car around with the reflexes of a pursued animal, reacting only to the need to get away, get away. I wish I had been one of the people who had it in them to rush to cradle either the wounded or the frightened, but that wish was overridden by my flight reflex.

I can think of other frightening occasions where my courage has blown out altogether in the same way. Like when 4-year-old T'ai fell off a very high top bunk in a cabin in the woods. I wailed like a wounded animal as I ran to him in the darkness, likely frightening him more than the fall had. Or that time my dad had a night terror (truly, an aptly named phenomenon) and, deep asleep, thrashed and screamed as if he were being stabbed with a knife. I lay upstairs, all of 30 years old, heart pounding as I listened to his unconscious terror made manifest. But I was frozen to my mattress on the attic floor, and left my poor mom both to comfort him and to peel herself off the ceiling. I have always felt bad about not having the courage to go downstairs to see if she needed help.

Last night we went to see the documentary about the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei. It's an amazing story of courage in the face of constant fear. I felt like a fraud as I made a donation to Amnesty International the moment we got home. Though such things matter, I know what I know about myself, and my tiny gesture is a poor disguise for a lack of courage to do so much more.