To Tattoo or not Tattoo... again?

I’m hankering for my next tattoo.
It never ceases to surprise me that I should have found such an interest for them since becoming a mother.
I rather suspect it’s for the same reasons I got married instead of remaining de-facto. Or the reason I married first and then had children. As opposed to doing what most of my friends did, which was to have children first, and then marry.

And whilst to marry, then have children, or indeed, marrying at all, seems to be the conservative option, the truth is, if everyone else is NOT getting married, and everyone else is having kids prior to tying the knot, then my actions where not the conservative ones, in fact, I was doing what no-one else was doing. I was doing the opposite. I’ve always done the opposite. Mostly just to be a little shit I expect. There has always been a little me inside shaking my fist yelling out, “I will not comply!”
And then there was always a bigger me inside, a wiser me, that said, “Well you don’t have to comply but you know, one should always keep it civil. So why don’t you pick something low key to not comply over, you know, don’t make a fuss, just keep the non compliance reasonable, don’t set fire to anything, try not to destroy public property because they’ll just lock you up, and if you must chose to not shave armpit hair to make a point, make sure you wear a good quality lipstick.”
My rebellions have always been understated affairs.
Marriage appealed because no-one else was doing it
Getting my husband to take my surname appealed because no-one else was doing it
Getting my nose pierced as a professional business woman, working in the city, meeting “Executive Business Sorts” appealed because no-one else was doing it (I rather liked watching CEO of Big Wig Company crane his neck to work out if he did indeed just get a glint of diamond shining off my nose in the late morning Sydney sunshine. I do half think I was inspired to see if I would get fired for having nose pierced. I rather liked the glamour of being sacked. Sadly no such dismissal came my way).
And getting tatts appealed because no-one else, that is, no other mummies, were doing it.
Oh sure.
They all did it in their teens, their 20’s. They pierced noses, had stars tattooed on their ankles and butterflies on their stomachs in their heady days of youth - precisely when I wasn’t interested in doing it. No, I seemed to want to wait until it was unseemly to do it. You know, when people look at you and wonder if the reason you’re doing things like this is because you’re mid nervous breakdown (actually, this could be the real reason). Or they wonder perhaps it’s because you’re having a midlife crisis (how scary to think I have reached the last few years of my thirties and actually qualify for mid life crisis!)
But instead, they don’t realise that it’s just the juvenile rebel in me.

It is as though my small inner rebellion, my next tattoo, is concrete evidence, that I am not part of the mold, that I broke the mold, that getting a tatt sets me apart from the conservativeness of motherhood. That somehow by getting ink it will make me someone different, that it highlights my individuality, it rebels from all the demands that motherhood places on me. It says, “I am not a real mummy. I will never be a real mummy. The idea of being a real mummy makes me feel trapped inside. It makes me feel like I am dying inside.”

I have this picture of a 1960’s housewife, dressed in her apron, standing mutely at the stove, smiling benignly at her perfect family, her perfect husband. And I want to tear the image to shreds, I want to scream at her to stop smiling. I feel fear prick in my heart that this image might be me. That somehow the vibrant woman I was prior to having children might morph into this plastic version of a person. That all the mummy gigs will turn me into a Stepford wife, that next time I look in the mirror I’ll be smiling benignly even if my heart is crying and screaming out to be released.

And so I see the tattooing, the ink, the planning of the ink, the beautiful images I picture being drawn upon my skin, as a way of celebrating that I’m still alive inside, that I’m still a person, that I am yet to be assimilated into the Borg. I’m not just a number with the word Mummy trailing after it.

It’s not that I don’t see any beauty in motherhood. It’s not that I don’t experience deep, transcendent moments holding my children. That dancing with Ella, or sweeping Lola’s now, very long, straight hair from her face doesn’t bring me joy. It’s not that I don’t take my girls in my arms and sweep them into the air and watch their eyes light up and not feel a passion that is almost inexplicable to describe. There are moments in motherhood, moments that shine with truth, an inner truth that hold a beauty, where I’m connected with the nurturer in myself, the protector, the teacher, and in those fleeting moments I feel whole again. I am not searching for me in amongst the days of accidental parenthood. In those moments I am complete, both sides of me, the wild girl who wants to drink vodka til the sun is rising, and the mother who wants to lay beside her little girl and hold her safely in her arms, are the same woman. And I don’t feel the lack. I don’t feel the need to differentiate myself from the boredom of motherhood, that 60’s housewife, trapped in the day to day drudgery of cleaning and cooking and bum wiping. I don’t feel that need to yell out, “I am more than the sum total of my motherhood parts!”

I used to wonder in my 20’s if I would ever have children.
I felt that as soon as I bore my own clan, it would be their lives that became important and my life would slowly fade into the greying world of motherhood, no longer an entity in my own right, merely a tool for the progression of my offspring’s lives.
But even though I fought against the survival of my own ego, my own life, I knew that if I had a child (for the longest time I only saw myself with one child, a girl child) that she and I would be close. But I realise now that my image I had of myself and my daughter, wandering around Manhattan, me looking sensational in groovy boho outfit, daughter equally gorgeous. Me, fabulous career woman off to book signing launch, daughter fabulous side-kick, was all about my ego too. Daughter was nothing more than the ultimate accessory to me. Perhaps why I only saw myself as having one? God knows how one would manage several children in that scene? After all I was fabulous career woman, tottering along in high heels, not Maria from the bloody Sound of Music, taking them for a stroll in Central Park getting them to sing about their favourite things.

I saw my independent life as colour. I saw a life with children as grey. I saw a life with several lovers, perhaps some I married, and perhaps some I didn’t, as colour. I saw life with one man, living in a house mortgaged to the hilt, 2.5 children and a dog, as the ultimate in suburban suicide. I couldn’t understand how people could aim so low. Demand so little. What on earth I wondered, would motivate people to sell their dreams for the suburban nightmare of everydayness, of conservativeness, of boringness? Why would you pick a monotonous life of wife-dom, motherhood and paying bills? Who I wondered would want that as their dream? And why? Why on earth, why?

But you do end up wanting that don’t you?
One day you’re at a bar full of thin, waif, model types and you’re all sipping wonderfully overpriced cocktails and you see that world for what it really is, a transparent, glossy, nothing-ness. And you find yourself aching for something more, something meaningful, something that your soul resonates with.
And then of course you have another vodka, and you find someone who smokes cigarettes and then you feel 16 again sitting outside being naughty smoking and you forget about that soul ache, that need for something more.

But once you realise that you want it. That you want children, a family, a life mate, a house (God who knew I would lust after the concept of having a house, a big house with a garden, somewhere for my kids to play on swings and jump on trampolines and play hide and seek, that I would lust after the dream of paying a mortgage, of being able to knock great big nails in the wall to hang my artwork wherever I wanted. That renting, or living in an apartment shoebox, or wanting something as mundane as a proper laundry would be the stuff of inspiration to me?) Who knew that I would crave that suburban sameness, the suburban dream? Who knew what I once saw as suburban madness was to turn into the only thing I could ever remember wanting with every fibre of my being?

Is it any wonder that one is driven to drink?

For pity’s sake. Can we all get on the same page here? Bohemian life of wandering around the globe chasing down dreams, or motherhood withwifehood and mortgagehood? Pick which one and get on with it!
The duplicity of even our own wishes and desires!

Don’t make me a mother! I am me! I refuse to be part of this con, this joke, this oppression of person!
Please, please, please, make me a mother! I want to share my life with my children. I want to watch them grow, to feed, to nature and care for another being, to cradle them, to care for them. I want to feel the sun come out when I see them smile.

And that duplicity continues within me.
I struggle with that, at my Mummy gigs I struggle with it.
And I practice ‘surrender’ on days when the struggle threatens to overwhelm me.
And on the best days, on the days when I am fully alive as a person because I am a mother, on the days I am illuminated by it, I remember to be thankful for it.
I remember to watch the glow inside me, to remember that it is there because of the decision to have my babies. They are the reason for my completeness.

And on other days, the less complete days, well I can get a similar glow from vodka, it’s more of an internal heat followed by a sharp cough but it’s not a bad substitute.

I do love that real glow, the one that steals up on you when I put the girls to bed and watch them sleeping. My hand rests on their little bodies, as I watch their breathing, the fall and rise of their chests. I can feel that glow diffusing into my cells, travelling through my skin, flooding my being. I feel the tears well up in my eyes, wondering what I would do without them. How would my spirit cope if they were taken from me? How would I cope if I were taken from them? I would I know, struggle with death himself to stay with them, I would fiercely fight him, strangle him to make sure I could sit forever by their side, watching them, holding them, lying down next to them, breathing in the breath that they exhale.