All in a Few Hours: The Best of Moments; The Worst of Moments

Mara here:

I was jogging last Friday, as I do every weekday morning, and I had a burst of...I don't know...inspiration. I'm not sure it was inspiration, but it was something.

I was going to get a tattoo.

In fact, I was going to get two tattoos.

The getting-the-tattoo part in and of itself is not particularly newsworthy. I have two already. My first is my husband's initials on my ankle. And the second is an angel that both my husband I got after Malia was born.

But that morning, while I was jogging along Riverside Drive in Los Angeles, I decided I was going to get a wedding ring tattoo—a tattoo that circles my ring finger. It's a tattoo I've been wanting for years. I've been envious of the few other people I've met who have them. The tattoos seem so romantic. And it's proof to myself that I believe in my marriage and the commitment and love I have for Brad.

It's also private. Once the tattoo heals, it will simply sit under my wedding rings so people won't see it.

But I'll know it's there.

And I'll know I was willing to get it.

Because the only thing that has stopped me all these years is the pain.

I'm going to be upfront and say that every tattoo I've gotten has been painful. People say they're not painful to get—but they are. Literally, a little clump of needles stabs you over and over. The best way for me to describe the feeling (most people probably don't experience it this way) is that someone starts stabbing me with something and then cuts through my skin with it. It's not a crazy-like screaming pain, but it's uncomfortable. As soon as it starts, I want it to stop.

It requires a lot of concentration to not jerk away.

And the fingers are one of the more sensitive areas of the body. The top of the fingers are bony, without a lot of fat. The underside is sensitive and there are a lot of nerves in the palm of the hand. Plus, it's awkward. They have to spread your fingers apart. I fortunately have relatively loose joints, so it didn't hurt, but it spreads the skin and makes it even more sensitive.

So this is why, for years, even though I really wanted this ring tattoo, I hadn't gotten it. I was simply avoiding pain.

But that Friday, during that jog, about eight hours before we were leaving on a trip to St. Louis, I decided I was going to get that tattoo.

The additional tattoo was a more recent idea. For Christmas, I had given my daughter a necklace with an infinity symbol because we have this inside saying that we love each other to infinity. I know a lot of people say it, so I'm not saying it's unique, but it's meaningful to us. 

So I wanted to get a tattoo of the infinity symbol and I knew just where to put it. I wanted it on my wrist, right where the ends of a fancy cuff bracelet met—a bracelet that Malia had given me for Christmas a few years earlier, so that every time I looked down, I would see the ends of the bracelet meeting the infinity symbol.

After my jog was done, I tried calling some tattoo places. Apparently tattooing is not a morning thing. None of the places were open until later that morning, which meant I was cutting the time available to get the tattoos significantly shorter since we were leaving for the airport in the afternoon.

I waited for the tattoo place I was familiar with to open, one that's near our home and where I had gotten my previous tattoos. I got there early and waited outside until it opened. But they didn't have any openings until much later. So I searched the internet and found another place that had lots of good reviews and called.

I was in luck. They weren't open for another hour, but they happened to have a guy there who was willing to see me early. I could drive right over.

Bingo!!

About 12 minutes later I was walking through the heart of Hollywood, gingerly entering a tattoo shop. It looked much like you would expect a tattoo shop to look with lots of drawings all over the walls. There was a motorcycle and an odd assortment of tattoo artists milling around. We'd had an unusual amount of rain over the past few days, so they had come in early to clean up some water that had leaked in. That was the only reason they were there so early.

I waited nervously as they finished cleaning up. I had to explain what I wanted and fill out and sign several pieces of paper promising not to sue them or blame them for bodily harm.

Then the tattoo guy started prepping my hand. He wiped the areas with alcohol and then shaved the skin. Then he drew the tattoo onto my skin (or they can transfer it from special paper they can print onto—like the temporary tattoos you get at carnivals).

About 15 minutes later, he was done. I was shaky from the nerves and the pain. But I was elated. I felt excited. I was proud of myself. I had done something I had been wanting to do for a while. I had overcome my fear. I felt giddy.

I left the shop and headed back to my car and drove out of Hollywood, still in a bit of disbelief over what I had just done. My finger and my wrist were covered with bandages and they still stung, but I was proud of the pain. I'd been brave enough to do something I had been afraid of for so long, and the fear and the adrenaline from the pain had left me with a feeling of euphoria.

Then about halfway home, I realized I didn't know where my bracelet was.

THE BRACELET: the bracelet my daughter had given me. The bracelet that was more expensive than any bracelet I would ever buy for myself because I don't spend money on fancy jewelry. The bracelet that my daughter could only afford to give me because at the time she had been acting and had money to spend. The bracelet that had been part of the motivation for me to get one of my tattoos.

My euphoria turned to panic.

I was jerked out of my fog by a car honking at me because I was driving erratically as I frantically tried to search myself and my car for any sign of the bracelet.

It was nowhere on me.

I had taken it off in the tattoo shop. The tattoo guy had already swabbed down my hand was holding it tightly because he was drawing the ring design on my finger. He told me I needed to take off my bracelet. So with my free hand I pulled the bracelet off and slipped it into the pocket of my sweatpants.

Then he had me lie down on a massage type table as he did the tattoo so he could secure my had steadily.

Somehow, between lying down on that table and walking to my car a couple of blocks through Hollywood, my bracelet disappeared. Had it fallen out of my pocket? Had someone picked my pocket? I didn't know.

I frantically called the tattoo shop, but they didn't have it. I made an illegal U-turn on Cahuenga Boulevard and headed back into Hollywood. I retraced my steps, but the bracelet was nowhere. I went back into the tattoo shop and asked them to please look everywhere. Could they please check the paper that had been on the table that was now in the garbage?

We didn't find it.

It was gone.

I overheard a guy in another room scoff and say, "It's probably already in a pawn shop by now."

I was distraught. I felt completely crushed.

I walked back to my car. This time, instead of feeling giddy I was feeling despondent. I was desperately searching under cars, checking for any glint of metal.

It was nowhere.

My whole drive I home, I was wondering how I was going to tell my daughter I had lost the bracelet. And I glanced down at my wrist a few times, suddenly feeling pangs of pain as I looked at the bandage that was covering the infinity symbol that a few minutes ago I had been so happy about. This time the pain was not from the needles, but from the reality of not having the bracelet on my wrist.

I won't go through all the drama, but my daughter was upset—very upset. I was upset. And to top everything off, we all had to get on a plane together for a four hour flight to St. Louis.

Several days have passed now. And the pain of the tattoos and the pain of losing the bracelet are starting to become more distant. The pain of the loss of the bracelet, for me, was not the actual bracelet itself. It was just the memory of her giving it to me. It was knowing that she loved seeing it on me. And it was just missing the weight of it on my wrist. It was as if there were a piece of me missing because it had been like I was always carrying a little piece of her with me.

But my attachment to it was never about the actual bracelet. In fact, the bracelet took me a long time to get used to. It was bulky and often clanged into things. It wasn't my style. I don't wear a lot of jewelry. But I loved it because I loved my daughter.

Once the panic had subsided, I realized it was something I was just going to have to let go of. I was not going to ever get the bracelet back. I had even called the closest pawn shop on Hollywood Boulevard hoping someone had tried to sell it. But no one had.

So I don't have the bracelet, but I have the tattoos. I have permanent markings on my body that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. And the infinity symbol on my wrist will, in a strange way, keep that bracelet with me too. I will always see the bracelet as part of the tattoo because I had spent so many hours seeing it in my mind before I actually got the tattoo.

And it's just how life is. Things are rarely simply good or simply bad. There are few times things happen exactly the way we want them to.

I'm still sad. I still feel bad. I still wish I had taken that extra moment to make sure I had the bracelet back on before I left the tattoo shop.

But I didn't do that.

So I hope wherever the bracelet is, it is bringing happiness to someone. I hope a homeless guy was able to sell it to buy some food, or maybe someone took it and gave it to his girlfriend. I don't know.

What I do know is that in that flash of realizing that my bracelet was missing, I went from the best of moments to the worst of moments. I don't know that I've ever experienced that before, and I don't think that I want to again.

I asked my mom a couple of questions about this:

Have you ever had an experience like mine where your emotions switched so dramatically?

Yes, I've had that happen and all I can say is that it's wrenching. It sets off an adrenaline reaction that I can feel in my body. And, as part of that adrenaline wearing off, fatigue sets in over the whole event. I think that happens to everyone, whether they're chronically ill, like I am, or not.

I'm sorry you lost the bracelet but I'm glad you have the infinity tattoo as a way of always having Malia with you. And your wishes for the bracelet to be helping or bringing joy to someone else truly touches my heart.

For people who aren't able to let go of material loss, are there any Buddhist practices to help them let go of attachment?

In my experience, the best way to let go of attachment is to reflect on the impermanence of all things. There's a wonderful story that I tell in my first book about a Thai Buddhist monk named Ajahn Chah. A novice monk brought Ajahn Chah some tea and before he could take the cup from the monk's hand, the monk had let go of it and it fell to the ground a broke into dozens of pieces.

The monk was horrified, but Ajahn Chah told him that it was okay because the tea cup was already broken. This story has been tremendously helpful to me over the years. It helps me let loose of my attachment to material things. If I break something that I loved, I say to myself, "It's okay. It was already broken." 

The Buddha said that everything that arises passes away. It can be a hard lesson to live with. After all, it includes our loved ones. And it can also be hard in regard to material things if they're special to us for one reason or another, like that bracelet was to you. 

A few months ago, I dropped a beautiful glass animal I've had for years. To my pleasant surprise, after the initial shock, I felt okay about it. Impermanence impermanence impermanence. Learning to give gracefully with it is one of the keys to finding peace of mind in this life. 

My new tattoos right after they were completed, before they bandaged them. (Before I discovered my bracelet was missing.)