I launch my musings with an article to suit this issue's theme on intergenerational conversations.
The Pierce
Timing speaks volumes to me of late. How moments intersect.
More than several years ago, though it seems like yesterday, my oldest daughter asked to have her navel pierced. I didn’t for a moment entertain it as a serious request. Even as, one by one, her friends showed up in my car or at my door, jewels twinkling from beneath cropped T-shirts, in the heat of summer, in the dead of winter, set in belly buttons of all shapes, sizes and cultural ideals of beauty or lack thereof, it didn’t seem like the kind of pierce appropriate for the kind of girl I perceived my daughter should be. Or the kind of thing a daughter of mine should sport for the whole wide world to see. What sort of mother would that make me?
Her repeated pleas, as inventive and persuasive as they became, fell on deaf ears. Ultimately, either the extra holes in her lobes satisfied the need, or she lost interest, or I permanently obliterated her body image with my resolute, though unfounded, autocratic maternal stand. In any case, she managed to become an adult and can now do as she pleases.
Then suddenly I was single, looking at my body in new ways and flirting with the idea myself. An outwardly conservative man confided in me that he found navel rings cute and sexy. Temporary tattoos and rhinestones met with enthusiasm, but alas, fell off in a flurry of same.
Before I had time to say "tatoo parlour", my navel had to undergo, not the pierce of a needle but the slice of a scalpel to repair a hernia. All those sit-ups, who’d have thought? My privileged position in humanity made it seem like I was the only woman my age going under the knife and not coming out as a new, improved version of myself. My middle-aged, middle-class existence is a constant contrast of the big and little pictures and it’s a tug-of-war to stay centered on what should matter.
Shortly after my surgery, my miraculously balanced, about-to-turn 14-year-old, rough and tumble tomboy of a youngest daughter unexpectedly asked for permission to pierce her navel for her birthday. “No,” I replied out of habit, certain the request would go the way of other ignored desires. But it reared its head persistently. “None of your friends have one. You don’t have to be first,” I put forth lamely.
Then one night, as I changed the unproven but expensive scar-reducing dressing on my incision, I was struck by the irony of life, the fleetingness of youth and the insignificance of decisions that sap up so much effort and energy on a daily basis. To support my new argument with myself, I recalled a psychology article which encouraged parents to respond affirmatively whenever possible to requests from the rare teenagers who, astonishingly in this day and age, were still asking permission for anything.
I summoned my daughter to my bathroom. She padded in gracefully, announced by her fruity Bath ‘N Bedtime scent, picked up on a recent overnight in Buffalo. Her footsteps were muffled by her huge, fluffy, pink Steve Madden slippers. She was innocently enveloped in her signature sleep wear: accidentally shrunken, child-sized undershirt, oversized flannel pants puddling onto the floor despite being rolled low onto her hips, revealing the flawless tummy that nature and youth had blessed her with.
“I changed my mind,” I told her, under fluorescent light, among the clean, white tiles.
She looked into my eyes quizzically, hopefully, clear skin rosy from just having been scrubbed up for bed.
“You know,” I specified, looking down at her midriff meaningfully.
She smiled widely, threw her arms around me and, for a moment, was the happiest girl in the world.
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