Butterfly

                               
   
My mom has a butterfly tattoo on her lower left hip.  Blue and purple and delicately outlined in black...it's really a cute little thing.  She got it while drunk on Jose Quervo and the knowledge that she had finally left my dad for good.

When I first saw it on her, I was eight and was shocked that she had gotten it.  I was scared by the butterfly because it represented a stranger living inside my mom.  Not the woman who dressed me and fed me. Not the woman who held me when I was sick, but the woman who ached, was lonely and had feelings that I couldn't understand back then.  I resented that tattoo like it was somehow capable of whisking my mom away from me on it's painted wings.  When I would get glimpses of it as she stepped out of the shower, or was dressing to start her day, I would feel so much anger toward her for getting it.  I felt betrayed.

My mom was always the strong one, the sensible one out of my two parents. She went to work every day, most of the time waitressing at local diners in whatever town we happened to be living.  She made sure our clothes were clean and that my brother and I felt loved.  She was always striving to build some bit of stability into our harried lives.  My dad was the selfish one, always doing what felt good at the time. He often skipped work to go fishing with his buddies, which included getting high on weed and cheap whiskey.  He was known for his booming voice and his tendency to explode when things got too tough.  That was Dad.  Tattoos and booze.

Not my mom.

If my mom could get drunk and let someone poke ink into her skin, what else could she do?  Would she leave my brother and me, the way she left my dad?  Would she simply walk out of the door and never look back?  I hated that tattoo and all it stood for in her.  And I felt that way for years, even as a teenager.

After I moved out and got married and started to make my own life choices, I rarely ever thought about that butterfly, though.  My mom and I lived in different states and weren't able to see each other much.  We talked on the phone often.  We wrote when we could.  But I had forgotten the anger I once had toward her for what I thought was her betrayal.

A few years ago, while visiting her at her home, I got another glimpse of that little butterfly.  Over twenty years had passed since the tequila warmed her veins and numbed her to the tattooist's needle.  She had been through many changes since then.  Morphing into the woman who stood before me, leaning toward the closet for a blouse.  She was not the lost, lonely woman who had just left her husband.  I was not the scared little girl afraid of being abandoned.  We were two grown adults.

I feel silly now, looking back at my childhood anger toward my mom and her butterfly.  The bitterness I felt toward that tiny patch of ink is gone now and is replaced with a little bit of jealousy.  My mom was emerging from her cocoon when she had those wings emblazoned onto her hip.  She was making a choice that she could never take back.  I am envious of the sense of power she must have felt. 

I wish I could have known her then, as the adult I am now.  Maybe, if I had been older then and been with her, I would have a little blue and purple butterfly on my hip, too.  On second thought...maybe I would have chosen red.