Jessie’s Earrings

It’s sweet how a chance word can evoke a flood of memories.

My mother Jessie is gone more than 20 years and I think of her I often.  But after talking to a friend about the current rage for tattooing and body piercing I thought of a habit of Jessie’s I’d forgotten.

She didn’t have a lot of jewelry and was the furthest thing from a clothes horse,  but she almost always wore earrings.   Her ears weren’t pierced and so she wore earrings that screwed or clipped on.

However as a teenager I  wanted to get mine pierced.  For some reason she forbade it,  and altho she and I battled over many things in those years,  on the pierced ears fight I backed down.  I guess it wasn’t that important to me,  but once I was no longer under her roof I did have mine pierced.

But as I knew from the time I wore screw-on and clip-on earrings myself,  they can pinch after you wear them for several hours.   And I now remember a gesture of my mother’s I found endearing.  She’d raise her hands to her ears,  pull off both earrings,  and massage her earlobes.

And now how I wish I could watch Jessie pull off those earrings just one more time!

(For more about Jessie see My Game Mother,  Fluffy and the Alligator Shoes,   Elbow Grease,  The Dinner Party,  Art Imitates Life,  Still Life,  Jessie’s 79th, and  Moonlight Sonata)

– Dana Susan Lehrman

I don’t know if I ever would’ve gotten a tattoo if my daughter hadn’t made us appointments with her favorite artist. I agreed to do it, but didn’t know what to choose. I went back and forth between some ideas (Hawaiian sunset! Lavender roses!), but finally decided on a bluebird of happiness. At the time, my sister was very near the end of her life and I wanted something beautiful and uplifting I could look at every day. And so it came to pass that I got a very optimistic looking bluebird on my midsection, right across from my appendectomy scar (still visible from when I got it at age six!). This was in early 2015. Painful? Yes, it was. But it’s also lived up to my expectations.I don’t know why people get tattoos in places they cannot see themselves without a mirror or serious contortions.

A few years ago now, after my husband was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment and I was struggling to deal with the changes in my life, I got my second tattoo–this time a reminder of what I needed to remember (notice the forget-me-nots) to do when I got frustrated or upset.

#2 left forearm

A few weeks ago, I drove past the place where I got my second tattoo and saw a “walk-ins welcome” sign. On impulse, I made a U-turn and went inside. Again, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, but had time to think about it. What I ended up getting has historical and religious significance: the Hamsa Hand.

#3 Right forearm

Google says: “The Hamsa Hand is a universal sign of protection, power, and strength that dates back to ancient Mesopotamia. Known as the Hand of Fatima in Islam and the Hand of Miriam in Judaism, it’s believed to protect against the evil eye and all negative energies.”

And: “Beyond its protective qualities, the Hamsa is also a symbol of peace and blessings. It’s often associated with the idea of bringing its owner happiness, luck, health, and good fortune. For many, a Hamsa tattoo is not just a protective talisman but also a symbol of hope and a source of positive energy and blessings.”

I figured: what could it hurt? (I didn’t mean literally, but still). Who doesn’t want to protect themselves from negative energies, while attaining good luck and happiness? And a dose of hope, positive energy and blessings–all for the reasonable price of a little tattoo? I was all in.

There’s no way I can keep up with my daughter, pictured here. But I’m delighted with my ink. At this point, I won’t say I’m done with tattoos, but the ones I have carry great significance and I do look at and think about them every day.

Breathe, seek happiness and positive energy, count my blessings–these things are more than skin deep.

*The variety in skin tones here is not accurate. I cannot account for the vagaries of cell phone photography

In the early 1970s, I landed back in San Francisco. For three years, me, my partner and her two children had been living a gypsy life, traveling from one collective household to another, from San Francisco to the Colorado Rockies, to western Massachusetts and finally, back to San Francisco. Read all about it in The Kitchen.

During all that meandering, we retained a few tribal rituals from the late ’60s.

One of those rituals revolved around the summer solstice and its many implications. To celebrate the awesome power of the sun on the longest day of the year, we few, we tribal few, would sit around the kitchen table with a cork, a needle, a burning candle, and a bottle of tequila.

Clutching a solstice token of our choice — a post, a ring, or a stud — we would sit in the throne (a liberated straight-back chair) and our brother in song, stage, and spiel would take a belt of tequila, pass it to the initiate who slugged a shot, passed the needle through the candle, placed the cork behind the ear lobe, and, with a wolfen growl, pierced the earlobe of the solstice celebrant, and inserted the post, ring, or stud through the newly pierced lobe.

Despite our meanderings, the tribe gathered each solstice to drink tequila and take another shot to the ear. Solstice by solstice, my array of posts, rings, and a gold hoop with the foot bone of a fox climbed up the gristle of my ear in a five-pierced arc.

Time passed. Year by year, the holes closed and my willingness to have the holes re-opened diminished. Finally, although the molten core of resistance, rebellion, and love continued to burn, the solstice days relaxed into a toast with a joint and a glass of wine. And that is the story of my piercings.

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