Ikiro

A couple of days after Dad died, I found a place in my small hometown that had decent reviews and got a tattoo.

Getting a tattoo is something I never imagined I would do; for years I told myself that I didn't want one because I didn't want to be an 80-year old woman with a blob of colors distorted by my wrinkly skin. But since I suffer from pretty intractable depression, I started thinking that having a daily reminder not to succumb to the lies my brain can tell me might not be a bad idea. 

生きろ -- Ikiro is the command form of the verb live. 

No matter what, 生きろ.

 
Every time I mentioned I was thinking about getting a tattoo, Ren firmly vetoed the idea. In Japan tattoos have traditionally been seen only on criminals or members of the mafia. As a result, tattoos are banned at most onsen hot springs, swimming pools, water parks, and beaches; Ren's resistance made sense. For awhile, I tried using henna to write ikiro on my wrist, but it was hard to be consistent. Plus, my handwriting stinks!  

So two days before Dad's funeral, Mom and I went to the tattoo parlor, and she watched as I got my first tattoo. The plan was to get a very small one that could be easily concealed by my watch when I'm in Japan. The guy botched it though, which I guess shouldn't have been a surprise since I AM from rural southern Indiana. 

Instead of a nice tattoo, I ended up with a mess. My life affirming message became three ugly scars.

 

The first tattoo

Every day I stared at it and obsessed about how horrible the letters looked. When I showed it to a local artist recommended to me by a friend, he was amazed at how much damage someone could do with such a simple design. He told me the only fix was to cover it with another tattoo. Obviously, this is not what someone who wanted a discreet tattoo likes to hear! 

I tried living with it, but my efforts to ignore the misshapen characters and the bumpy illegible handwriting failed. 

Then Falcon came up with a solution. She created a simple design that would at once cover the old tattoo while also amplifying the meaning behind it. The black spots on the koi conceal the scars. The dot in the semicolon is from the original tattoo. 

 

Falcon's design

I never thought I would get one tattoo, and now I’ve gotten TWO! The second one is much more noticeable than I intended when Mom and I went together to the tattoo parlor during those difficult early days. But I’m choosing to look at the bright side. The first tattoo I got in my hometown with my mom. The second one is designed by my kid. The process has been an imperfect journey, but I can't think of a better metaphor for my life!!

 

PS: According to Ren, if our kids want tattoos, it’s my fault, but I’ve told them they have to wait until they’re thirty since none of us know what we’re doing until at least then!

PPS: At this point in our marriage and parenting neither of us are naive enough to think we can control another human.

PPPS: Don’t worry. I bought a wider watch band.

Girls’ Trip

In the early days after my dad passed following a decline that was at once painfully slow but also way too fast, I told my mom I wanted to do a girls’ trip back to her hometown. Dad had promised to take her there one more time before they died, but he wasn’t able to keep up his end of the bargain. There were so many things he still planned to do. Even as his condition worsened and he became bedridden he talked about wanting to take us on a dinner river cruise. It wasn’t until his final days that he suggested he might have to stay home when we went.

It’s weird how suddenly the last visit to a place ends up being your last visit. There is no warning, no voice in your head telling you to enjoy every minute because they will be the last ones you have. My parents’ last trip together to our house happened in May of 2019. I’m sure their last trip to my mom’s hometown happened earlier than that. 

When I was a kid, we spent two weeks each summer in Jacksonville, Florida. That’s where Mom grew up and where my grandparents lived. My family of six loaded up the luggage and piled into the wood-paneled station wagon, my sister and I lying between the suitcases in the back, and made the 14-hour drive from Indiana. When we stopped for boiled peanuts in Georgia, we knew we were getting closer, and when we crossed the Swanee River, we knew we were practically there. Not once did we cross it without singing the song. 

Our first stop, once we got to Jacksonville was always my grandparents’ small orange-brick house nestled among the mansions not far from the St. John’s River. That stop was always the best but also the hardest because we were so close to our destination but not quite there —for me and my siblings the goal was Jacksonville Beach. 

My memories of those visits were of walks along the St. John’s River, of trips to local seafood restaurants where I always ordered a friend shrimp basket (Mmmm hush puppies!), and of hours and hours playing on the beach. 

Driving with Falcon from our home six hours north to pick up Mom at my parents’ home in Indiana and then continuing down to Florida, I realized I had so many other memories. A lot of them are of my dad knowing the way. 

Traveling all of those miles with four kids in a station wagon had to have been stressful, but I don’t remember that. I remember buying different flavors of Fanta. I remember staying in connected hotel rooms in Atlanta. I remember Chattanooga and Castle Rock. I remember the smell of the ocean as we crossed the bridge over the intercostal waterway. 

Our trip to Florida this week was constantly directed by the gps on my phone. I got us all the way there and back without incident. We saw my grandparents’ old neighborhood and got to the beach, and we never got lost. But I can’t say I ever really knew the way. Dad did, though, and our girls’ trip to Florida this week made more aware of having lost him than ever before. 

Jacksonville Beach, June 2023

Sunrise, June 2023

Fried shrimp basket tastes as good as I remember 

Mom and I on the beach when I was 3

Fishing on the St. John’s River with Grandpa when I was 3

Dad and I on our way to Florida

An Ode to Sky on His Graduation

Sky started his school career by being kicked out of two different preschools because of his behavior. He could tell you what page of which book mentioned the thing you were talking about, but he didn’t understand it wasn’t ok to crash into other kids, run around his chair, or touch everything and everyone between his chair and the teacher’s desk. 

Once we had a diagnosis, we realized his sensory and auditory processing “disorders” meant that he experienced the world in a vastly different way than we did. That’s when we started along the path of helping him develop the tools he would need to be successful in a world that isn’t suited to him.  He spent hours in therapy learning how to interpret people’s words and facial expressions. We made social stories—so many social stories. 

It was amazing to see him start to thrive once people learned to speak his language. As he cracked the code of how the neurotypical world worked, he started to take off! By sixth grade, he was excelling academically and no longer needed an IEP. He also had a solid friend group (that he’s kept to this day.)

Then Covid happened. His sophomore year was an every other day schedule with him learning remotely one day and in the classroom the next. The teachers were figuring things out as they went along, and suddenly nothing was as clear as it used to be, making it impossible for him to understand how to apply all of the social and classroom rules he had worked so hard to memorize. 

He fought to continue doing what he’d been doing, but the wheels came off after the start of second semester. He began to struggle in classes and had to medically withdraw from some of them. It got to the point where he couldn’t go to school any more. He stopped talking to friends and couldn’t enjoy any of the things that used to make him so happy. There were many days during those long, horrible months where he wasn’t sure he would be able to finish high school. It was a tremendous blow for someone who had worked so hard for so long just to make school work for him. 

Ren and I struggled to help him and feared he wouldn’t find his way out. But he didn’t give up. Junior year was still really difficult. He couldn’t juggle as many activities as before. He had to be more careful to prevent himself from being overwhelmed. I had to learn not to push him (that one took me a long time to figure out). He found a combo of classes and activities that worked for him and slowly began to excel in his classes again. By senior year, he had regained his rhythm. 

Last month, he graduated Summa Cum Laude, and in the fall he heads to college with academic and art scholarships. But what makes us proudest is how he never quits. He is 100% Sky, and I’m so glad I’ve been able to go on this journey with him. 

When I started this blog more than ten years ago, I did it because I wasn’t at all sure how to be a good mom for Sky. It all felt so overwhelming, and the only thing I knew how to do was put one foot in front of the other and try to address issues as they arose. Along the way, I slowly (painfully slowly) learned how to get out of the way and let him show me what he needs. 

If you have time, I encourage you to go back to the beginning of the blog and look at how much this kid has changed. We’ve both have!

Umm, hi.

Tap, tap, tap…..umm, hello? Can anyone hear me? Hi. It’s me, Moe. And I’m back. 

Let’s see. Where should I start? I guess first I should tell you where I’ve been. My depression got worse. And things with the kids got more difficult (which, honestly, I didn’t think was possible). The book I’d been writing came out. (It’s an academic book about a samurai and history in popular culture.) Then my dad got sick. And then he got sicker, and then we lost him a few months ago. After that, I wasn’t sure how to keep going, but I did thanks to support from family and friends. And now my meds are straightened out, and I feel like I can do things again. I’m starting to work on a second book, and I think I might even be able to blog. 

If you’re still here, thank you. 

What else? Sky graduated and is getting ready to go to college!! Pink/Falcon just finished her first year of high school and is still drawing and writing. And Stow is in middle school (!!!). He’s taller than me now. In fact, they all are (but don’t tell Falcon I admitted that). And, Ren? Well Ren continues to amaze me with his fortitude. The man is still more active and flexible than me despite the fact he has a titanium rod from the base of his neck to his tail bone. He’s four years out from the last surgery and starting to have issues again, but we’re hoping they will work themselves out. 

If I can figure out where to dive in, I’ll post again soon! Hope you are all well.