Trip Around The Sun

Semana Santa in Trujillo, Honduras ‘94

I was twenty-four years old when a friend dared me to get a tattoo. It was the late 80s. I didn’t know many people with body art at the time, and being rebellious like I was, my friend Tammy and I found ourselves in a tattoo shop in Milwaukee after the bars closed, leafing through tattered photo albums of ink drawings and pictures to choose from. “How about this one?” She pointed to a blue fairy holding a bouquet of flowers. This was a woman who owned a unicorn velvet painting that she proudly hung in her living room. I wasn’t interested in her suggestions.  

I had met her at the restaurant where we both waited tables and tended bar busting our butts, living with the constant fear that a slow night meant we might not make rent. Tammy had an infectious laugh, and the boys who filled the bar were enamored with both of us, leaving lots of money in the tip jar in hopes someday we’d notice them. Tammy and I were young and cute, living on hopes and dreams of our own.

Margaritaville came on the radio. The tattoo artist, a girl maybe twenty who was goth before it was a thing, squealed, “I love this song!” The three of us danced around the small shop to the chagrin of two Army boys still in basic training getting tattoos from a pot-bellied, bearded man wearing a t-shirt and a leather vest.

“It’s a sign,” Tammy said. “You have to get a parrot. You know, like Jimmy Buffett. You could be a Parrothead.”

We were drunk and silly and the goth girl thought it was a great idea, too. “I’ve done like six of them. It’ll be really cool.”

The Army boys thought so too while the bearded man simply shook his head. Probably not the first time he’d witnessed such shenanigans.

So, lying face down with my shirt off on a black, padded vinal table, I braced myself for the pain. And it hurt. At least in the beginning. When the goth girl finished, she guided me to a floor length mirror then handed me a handheld mirror so I could check out her handiwork on my left shoulder. The parrot was colorful and well-defined, even though half my bony shoulder was bright red from the fresh wound. “What do you think?” the goth girl asked.

“It looks awesome,” Tammy said.

“I love it,” I said. And I did. It was badass and had meaning despite the fact that the whole idea of a tattoo was Tammy’s and a girl I didn’t even know had talked me into a permanent parrot on my shoulder.

“You look like a pirate,” one of the Army boys said.

“Fuck off,” the goth girl shot back. 

A lot happened over the next few months. A gorgeous, lanky guy with dark brown eyes, and a soft smile came into the bar and swept me off my feet. Before we had a chance to know if things would work out, I got pregnant. What followed would take up volumes here and, in the end, I placed my daughter, Kelsey, up for adoption. 

All this happened while the scabs on my shoulder healed, revealing a beautiful bird that would be with me forever.

I’ve always loved Jimmy Buffett’s music. And when I woke up this morning and learned he had passed during the night surrounded by family and his dogs, I cried. We never met, and I never even went to one of his concerts. I hate crowds and jammed parking lots. I’m a lone wolf who enjoys the company of family and friends. I prefer the quiet and routine of daily life surrounded by my animals and the bird songs coming from our backyard. I also love music, and I love to dance. And even more, I love to dance to Jimmy Buffett’s music when I’m cooking, working in the garden, or cleaning the house. It’s his songs that got me through the dark hours of my pregnancy, the adoption, and beyond. It was also his songs I danced to when I found Kelsey twenty-seven years after giving her up and again three years later when we finally met.

There is a moment each summer that someone reminds me I have a parrot tattoo on my shoulder. It usually happens at the beach or at a party where I’m wearing a sundress. “I didn’t know you had a tattoo,” he or she says.

 And I wonder is this because I don’t seem like someone who would have a tattoo or is it because I do. The older I get, I believe it’s the former. That drunk, giddy, girl in the tattoo shop who took a dare to get a tattoo of a parrot on her shoulder is long gone. The day I found out I was pregnant, she disappeared. It was time to grow up. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I started college soon after Kelsey was born. After I graduated, I moved far away and lived in the jungle for a while and got a good job when I returned. I married, got divorced and eventually married again. I’m a respected member of the community who people depend on. That’s the person people see at the beach and at summer parties. But Jimmy Buffett sings to that lost girl, reminding me that the parrot on my shoulder still has meaning.

I pray he is enjoying his last trip around the sun.