My Ankles
I had thought about a tattoo for a long time. Maybe it was a way, as CSN&Y said in Almost Cut My Hair, of letting my freak flag fly. Maybe it was the manifestation of a midlife crisis. Maybe it was insistence that I was more than a suburban soccer mom. At any rate, the year I spent in Stratford Upon Avon studying Shakespeare provided the final impetus needed to alchemize the longing into action. I had such an edifying, life-changing experience there, and developed such deep, life-long friendships, that it felt essential to commemorate it in ink.
When I returned to visit the summer after I’d graduated, a man I didn’t know ushered me and three friends into the tight back room of an only slightly larger barbershop storefront. He had inked the talented Jenna, who had designed our tattoo, several times. In trusting her, I ignored the voices in my head screaming at me to turn and run for any number of reasons. The whole let’s-get-the-same-tattoo-because-we’re-besties idea was mine, so I “got to” go first. I feared if I didn’t, I’d chicken out watching the others. I lay, belly-down, on what looked like a doctor’s examining table, to have three sprigs of rosemary tattooed onto the outside of my right ankle. “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance,” Ophelia tells the small, horrified audience witnessing her fall apart (Hamlet, IV.v.199). It seemed only fitting that we, Shakespeare-obssessed friends, nearly driven mad by the intensity and rigour of the MA program – yet who survived and bonded fiercly over it – should share this herbal souvenir.
Despite the photographs which show me cringing as if he were about to extract my wisdom teeth sans Novocain, the procedure barely hurt and took little time. I sat, ankle covered in salve and Saran wrap, and watched my friends go under the needle. We all survived, and we are all linked forever with our black ink branchlets.
Sometimes I forget it’s there, and smile when I notice it, because it evokes every good moment, every horrid moment, and everything in between that I experienced on the banks of the Avon at the Shakespeare Institute. I have not once regretted it.
The other ankle, however, feels a bit jealous and naked. I have contemplated having something done to rectify that situation and restore a symmetrical balance to my body, but I’ve lacked both inspiration and the ability to have it done safely in the pandemic.
And then, for some reason, I mentioned to my friend Randy that I’d been contemplating a skull anklet for that side. Despite their sometimes scary association with Halloween and death, many cultures revere them as auspicious protectors (Mexico, Tibet). “Pam,” she said, “could make us both one!” Her friend Pam owns Good Charma (https://goodcharma.com/), and some of her captivating creations adorn each of our wrists. “We could get matching ones!”, I said. I have known Randy for 43 years. We met on the first day as February Freshman at Middlebury College, lived together there until we graduated, and have been BFFs since, through ups and downs, thick and thin, and good times and bad. We have a history and a bond like no other, and this seemed such a nice way to commemorate it. Pam sent us a design within a week – a simple strand of sterling silver beads, with a single, delicate skull charm. “Yes!”, we both said, with no need for tweaking or redesign, and within less than another week, we both had them around our ankles, vowing like teenagers with their first steady boyfriend’s ring, never to take them off. Like the with the tattoo, when I look at it, or feel it slip down onto the top of my foot as it touches the ground first thing in the morning, I smile. It reminds me of where we’ve been, where we’re going, and how much we have meant to each other over the years.
Pam gifted the identical skull charm to Romeo the Cat and to Randy’s dogs, Hudson and Jackson, so they too could join the coven. When it’s safe to go out again, Randy and I will finally have a chance to meet up, and one of our first trips will be to a tattoo artist to get a likeness of the skull charm inked on our ankles to make it permanent.
Not that any of these connections need physical proof of their importance, but as so many of us have tangible touchpoints – Buddhas, four leaf clovers, crosses – that hold special meaning for us and evoke calm and contentment, we, too, will let our ankles bring us balance.