Type 1 Diabetes

52-6 What Tattoos You Have and Their Meaning

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I came late to the tattoo scene. I’d wanted one for a long time, but I heeded my then-not-my-ex’s advice about how a visible one would be perceived by the stodgy management where we both worked. My personal inclination was not to give a f**k, but he made sense. However, it wasn’t until he was my ex that I got the first of two tattoos I have. Pick your battles.

Tattoo #1

I wanted something to denote my Celtic heritage, but I didn’t want what every other person who thought they were Irish got: a shamrock, a Celtic knot, or a Celtic cross. I wanted something unique but recognizably Celtic.

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My triskele is similar to this but is enclosed in a circle.

I looked through books on Celtic history and finally came across an article about archeology at the neolithic tomb in Newgrange, Ireland. Prominent among the carvings there was a three-lobed spiral called a triskele or a triskelion. The triskele is sometimes called the spiral of life, and ancient Celts found things in the combination of three to be sacred, likely why they took to the Catholic trinity.

Once I had a sample of what I wanted in hand, I went to a tattoo shop near my house. It was small and clean, but let me tell you it was not like the shops in the reality TV shows popular then–L.A. Ink and Miami Ink. The guy behind the desk had tattoos with a death motif on every inch of exposed skin, and it didn’t take much imagination to figure out what was on the unexposed skin. He didn’t seem terribly interested in what I showed him, but once I mentioned it was a carving from a Bronze Age tomb, he was all in.

The best place I decided was on my left ankle, on the inside. He made the stencil and applied it, and I wanted to watch him do the tattoo. Outlining the tattoo wasn’t an issue. It hurt but it wasn’t excruciating. The artist kept asking me if I wanted to lie down. Nope, I’m good, I told him.

When he started filling in what he’d outlined, which involved a head on the tattoo gun with multiple needles and a scraping motion, I decided it was time to lie down. In all, it took less than an hour and fewer than a hundred dollars to get inked.

I’m a bad girl now, I thought, and relished in my badness.

However, when I went back to work on Monday, I wore slacks for a couple of weeks before I wore skirts, and with them I wore dark hose or tights. Finally, after a month of keeping my tat “under cover” I wore a skirt with nude panty hose and…

No one noticed. Oh well, so much for bada$$ery.

Tattoo #2

The second tattoo is for a far more somber reason than denoting my heritage and wanting to be a bada$$, in my own mind at least.

When one of my grandsons was four years old, he was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes–an autoimmune disease which essentially means his immune system attacked his own pancreas and put it out of service. At four, he faced a lifetime of insulin shots several times a day.

My own brother had T1D, but he wasn’t diagnosed until he was in his twenties. He eventually became insulin-resistant, and every system in his body started to fail. He died when he was forty-four. I take heart for my grandson because the medicine and the treatment for T1D is far superior than what it was close to forty years ago when my brother was diagnosed.

My grandson’s father, who has a couple of tattoos also, and I decided we needed to show solidarity with him. If he was going to face a lifetime of shots, we could endure needles for as long as it took to get a tattoo.

On my right ankle, mirroring the first tattoo, is a T1D ribbon.

ribbon

My tattoo omits the words “Type 1 Diabetes” and has my grandson’s name above it and the date of his diagnosis below it.

This kid is the bravest little guy I know. An insulin pump has replaced the syringes, and he’s a normal kid in every way, including getting on Mamo’s nerves. Now eight, he’s decided he has T1D so he can educate people about it. I adore him; I absolutely adore him.

So, do me a favor. Read this and go contribute to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Tattoo No. 3?

I’ve been wanting a tattoo acknowledging the fact I’m a writer for some time, as well. I’m thinking on the inside of my wrist so I can look at it when there are those days where the words won’t come.

I’m leaning toward the words, “I write” or “Write well,” in my own handwriting, with a small quill pen in case no one gets it.

How about you? Are you inked? What do they symbolize? Tell me or show me in the comments.

Friday Fictioneers – How the Week Flies By

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To call this a slow writing week for me would be an understatement. As a recent Facebook meme states, this was my week: “Writer’s Block–when your imaginary friends stop talking to you.” That’s exactly the way it felt, and I’m not really sure what I did to piss them off so they’d spend the week sulking in silence. I guess it’s like marriage–you’re expected to read minds and know what’s bothering the other person.

In reality, spring cleaning–indoors and out–was the culprit. Unlike many writer friends, gardening is not a chore I like. It doesn’t free my mind to be creative. It just makes me mutter about how much I hate it, but I figure the neighbors would get upset if I allow the flowerbeds to go au naturale. I did get a certain amount of satisfaction from reorganizing my household filing system so that, next year, when I take everything to my accountant he won’t quirk an eyebrow at the pile of paper I hand over.

Bottom line: Not much writing or revising done, and two blog posts missed (including one on the Tom Wolfe Seminar I attended and will write about). It’s been a while since that happened (probably the same time last year). Though all was not lost. I did manage to come up with some decent ad copy for a radio spot to promote the SWAG Writers Book Fair later this month. (See the first item in the column to the right). Somehow, thirty seconds worth of words is little compensation for a week’s worth of missing creativity.

On Wednesday I look a brief look at the photo prompt for this week’s Friday Fictioneers and literally said, “WTF?” (Well, I didn’t use an abbreviation.) As this week’s pattern Friday Fictioneers Logoplayed out, I sat down yesterday to write something, and, even though I had a concept, I couldn’t force the words onto the screen. I even switched to pen and paper because sometimes that gets the creative juices flowing, but zilch, nada, nothing.

I must have fallen asleep last night with the concept in mind because, boom, I woke early this morning with the story in my head. I got up immediately and got it into a Word file, and, whoa, 121 words. On first glance, I figured there was no way to cut twenty-one words, but I did; and the concept is intact. This is what I love about Friday Fictioneers–I’ve reached the point where not doing a Friday Fictioneers story would mean letting myself down, and that’s great inspiration.

Today’s story is “Siblings,” and you’ll see a dedication at the beginning of the story. I didn’t lose my only brother in Vietnam, like the story’s protagonist, but I did lose him in another war–one called Type One Diabetes. As usual, if you don’t see the link on the title, scroll to the Friday Fictioneers tab above and select it from the drop-down list.