W-2s have been sent out and I have filed my taxes so in keeping with my white trash roots, this means time to pay some bills and get tattooed again.  Yee-Haw!

I am battling myself with my desire to continue adding to the ones I already have and listening to those that cringe at the idea and ask me if I am sure I really want to cover more skin. 

I only have 7 tattoos and none of them take up a huge amount of real estate.  Save for the one on my ankle, all are covered as long as I at least have short sleeves on.  I just can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be tattooed and really, anyone who is going to be in my life, has to want to be there for who I am, not what is or isn’t on my skin. 

I don’t get work done lightly.  It took me several years to decide on what I wanted and where I wanted the designs.  I have a folder on my computer filled with images that inspire me and I look at them when I get the urge for ink and some of them I have already ruled out.

There is something addictive to having work done.  It isn’t the pain.  I had actually been afraid of getting more tattoos after I got diagnosed because I wondered with all the nerve and muscle pain I am always in anyway, what would happen to me once a needle was applied to my skin.  Nothing.  I didn’t go into a flare, if anything, the increased endorphins helped a little bit. 

Last year, I got calligraphy scorpions put on the top of each shoulder to signify Jeff.  I am not big in to memorial tattoos like photographs or names but I do like little symbols.  I like having something on me that only I know the meaning of. 

My aunt, R, is sick. She is my favorite aunt and actually, one of my most favorite people in the world.  She has cancer again.  She was in Japan during the bomb blasts and has had and already survived breast cancer, colon cancer, and leukemia.  Now she has a tumor in her throat.  It effects her ability to be able to swallow so eating and drinking are difficult. 

She has already experienced feeding tubes from her previous cancers and has no desire to deal with them again.  I am not sure how she is keeping up her strength but her spirits have always been high.  She is unstoppable. 

After my uncle died, she went back to college.  She was in her late 60s, early 70s and taking English and literature classes.  She wrote a paper about her life and about being a mother to her two daughters and she called her self a Tiger.  It is so fitting.

I wanted to get a tiger tattooed on me but I think I have settled on a Tiger Lily instead for two reasons:

1. R is Japanese and she attended trade school as a girl.  Her school was for floral design.  She gardened and worked in a florist’s shop for as long as I can remember. 

2. Tiger Lilies were my favorite flowers as a child.  They were so bright and cheerful in the spring and I used to love to scrape what I considered to be powder off the stamen.  I would rub it on my hands and face and paint myself with the black pollen. 

I can’t think of a better representation to apply to myself.  To replace the marks of pollen I used to make with something that will always make me think of my aunt and her strength of spirit. 

*after I wrote this, I found the paper and she doesn’t call herself a tiger, she calls herself a lion but I think I am sticking with the Tiger Lily – only I (and all of you) will know what it means*