“You’re Always Blue,” Tiny Dancer Said.

I have a lot of words to say on this subject but I’m not going to say them yet. 

We need time. So time is what I’m giving. Time, space. 

But I will say this: our Tiny Dancer is mighty and in need. She loves Justin Baldoni, so as he and I text-teamed yesterday, he said it better than I ever could: “Tiny Dancer… You’re in my heart. You’re in my soul.” Too tender to put here, too sacred to her. But keep her there please. Everyone and any one who’s reading this now.

For now, I’ll talk about the words on our bodies. 

A silhouette of a dancer on her brother (he dreams outside the lines, so wouldn’t boil it down to letters), and “Ballerina” on my eldest. She hates tattoos and never wanted. Now, permitted by me (Sorry Momma!) in her best friend’s mother’s handwriting. Blue ink. “You’re always blue,” Tiny Dancer said. “Dancing in the sand” for me- etched in the sweeping hand of Tiny Dancer’s mom too. A woman of words.

“Ballerina, dancing in the sand.”

I have OCD which impacts in stupidly inconsistent ways- one of which is “balance”. I can’t get a tattoo on one side and not the other. I was crawling out of my skin. “I’m too broke for this!” I said to the artist, as she crafted on my eldest in time; a body WITH time. “It’s okay,” she reassured, “We can make this happen.”

“We watched ‘Our Friend’,” I told Sam, the best friend there to support, “Remember I made you see it because it traumatized Hepburn and Jonathan and I?” We watched thinking we’d see our friendship. We saw things films rarely show: how the sick person can be mean or fallible. Love as pain. That it takes a village.... but the village often falls away. 

“I have tattoos for my love; for Zachary. I have my eldest’s handwriting and my parents’. Yet, no homage to what it takes to be a friend like you two….. Nothing of Follin.” (And I’m pretty sure I’ll love her forever)

My wrist now reads- in the quirky ink of my dyslexic teen- “My Goodbye Sweater.” The dumbest... but possibly my favorite. Left: Tiny Dancer. Right: friends who understand that loving someone like me, like us, is painful.

“I put on my goodbye sweater”....

There are more words…. But they’re not for now.

For now: heart, soul… art.

The work here is reader-supported. To receive new words, videos and art, kindly considering supporting, even though I know that funds and free-time is precious and should never be taken for granted

Thank you for keeping words in the world! If you can’t give, get some for free every week by leaving your email at the link above, and kindly consider suggesting this space to a friend?