I'm entertaining the idea of inking myself. A tattoo. Seven little letters in script, either on my foot or on my rib cage below my left armpit. Hidden but there.
An Italian phrase: Mai Soli.
There is a part of me talking myself out of doing something as "yucky" as branding myself.
This permanent reminder would be for the memory of four people, one of whom is "still kicking" in her own words. My grandparents. Four people for whom I am forever grateful, even as I live most of my life without them. They deserve a little introduction, shall we?
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On the paternal side we have Cleo and Helen. Cleo's family moved in across the street from Helen's, just as he arrived home from a tour in Burma during World War II. The moment Helen saw him she told her mother, "I'm going to marry him." Her mom said she was crazy but Helen won. The family moved, Grandpa went to work, Grandma took care of their small family of one girl and one boy. My dad's parents are the reason Florida is still a favorite vacation spot. They went almost every year, my dad as a boy sticking his head out the window and avoiding the backlash of Grandpa's unfiltered cigarettes.
My grandparents were my buddies and we always visited on Fridays. There were Grandpa's stories of a heroic, protagonistic bobcat stuck in a tree. The cat would stay in a tree because Grandpa couldn't think of what to do with him. The Irish style hats he wore although he wasn't Irish. How much he hated books on tape, because he loved to read but lost most of his eyesight before I was born. The way he and my grandma loved each other when she called him "honey bunny." How my grandma crumbled when he passed away, but not without an admirable fight.
My grandma is still alive and with higher than satisfactory blood pressure, through all her medical issues. She is much tinier than she was, she talks about the past, and there is not one day I am around her that she doesn't discuss her bowels. Grandma is a much different person than the days of crossword puzzles, Limited Too trips, and watching "Walker, Texas Ranger." On our past vacation she forgot how me and my brother are related. I cried for twenty miles. Then I remember her as she was, not as she is, and love her unconditionally for it.
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My maternal grandparents, Jim and Kay (or James and Clara to outsiders), were depression era babies from rural, Central Illinois. German Catholic families with lots of children and even more farm land. They grew up close to one another but I don't recall how they met. Like all good American boys, Jim enlisted in World War II. He asked Kay to marry him and she responded with a "no." The possibility of being a widow in her late teens was too frightening. So when Jim came back, two torpedoed ships later, she said yes.
Fast forward six children (number six being mom, the first and only girl) and ten grandchildren later, then I'm in the picture. Grandma's puzzle and Yahtzee! buddy; she even taught me to cheat at solitaire. A lifelong Cubs fan, she taught me to not be a Cubs fan. ("They're horrible!") Her ruffle collared shirts and dangling pearl earrings. Grandpa's well-kept Buick which he drove to pick us up from school, never a minute late. Grandpa's pressed plaid shirts, thick rimmed glasses. My younger brother's little legs on their long walks, as he kept us with his 6'2" grandpa. Dinners at 5 p.m. with pudding for dinner. A large scale fifty year wedding anniversary surrounded by lifelong friends and family.
Watching my grandpa pass away from colon cancer that had taken over his body. Grandma joining him suddenly, less than a couple years later.
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My children won't know their great-grandparents as I do. They will be figments of their active imaginations. No more real than characters in short stories; whom mommy visits at Camp Butler National Cemetery when she is in her hometown.
So for all that, the question of adding a permanent ink to my body continues.
Mai Soli means "Never Alone."
In the middle is me, grandma Kay, and grandpa Jim standing behind us.
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